The fans who had been calling for Maria, Maria had their way at the end, as the band plunged into a ragged but upbeat version of one of Milton Nascimento's most enduring songs. In an evening dominated by low-key, sometimes lugubrious settings of his music, the burst of unfettered adrenalin was all the more welcome.

Not that it is easy to enjoy any performances at this depressing venue. As a re-creation of a Tube station platform during rush hour, the main floor of the Jazz Café is an impressive piece of living sculpture; all that is missing are the garbled PA announcements and the pickpockets. Book a table upstairs and you will be lucky to get more than a glimpse of the musicians' heads. As an example of interior design, the place is little short of perverse.

Any opportunity to catch Nascimento has to be grabbed with both hands, however, even if he really belongs on a much bigger stage. Part of that extraordinary generation led by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, the singer- songwriter is now in his mid-sixties, and his voice has lost some of that old angelic purity. Still, the back catalogue is always a good enough reason to catch him on tour. Moreover, his latest album, a collaboration with the French brothers Belmondo - the trumpeter Stéphane and the saxophonist Lionel - finds him moving back into jazz territory in a set of horn and string arrangements vaguely reminiscent of Fifties-era Gil Evans.

The band that appeared here did not lack firepower. André Ceccarelli - in town last month alongside the superb Michel Legrand - is one of Europe's finest drummers, while Eric Legnini is a match for any pianist on this side of the Channel.

This was a curiously muted set, nonetheless. The absence of strings may not have been a problem, but the lack of variation in the pacing, which hovered around the slow-to-medium mark, threatened to become oppressive. Nascimento's phrasing also lacked some of its old authority, although he sounded relaxed enough on the early, samba-tinged hit Cançao do Sal.

Elsewhere his trademark falsetto had a raw and fragile edge to it. Nada Sera Como Antes swung genially enough, fortunately, and Travessia possessed the requisite anthemic stature. Overall, though, too many of the jazz settings lacked that vital tropical spark.

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