Two of the most inspirational concerts I have been lucky enough to attend were given by Abdullah Ibrahim, South African bandleader, composer and sage. No other contemporary musician combines such soulfulness with the bravura of Ellingtonian swing. Which is precisely why this meandering show proved such a disappointment.

The idea of linking up with the BBC Big Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra, not to mention a team of vocalists, must have looked enticing on paper. In practice, it turned out to be a hotchpotch of worthy ideas and the occasional moment of unadorned poetry, with Ibrahim himself often reduced to the role of onlooker, much of the piano playing entrusted to his collaborator Steve Gray.

During the main part of the evening, as the Concert Orchestra diligently worked its way through his Copland-esque African Concerto, Ibrahim sat at the side of the stage while Gray negotiated the undernourished piano part. Incorporating material from the Desert Flowers album, the suite-like piece - conducted by Jules Buckley - gambolled amiably whenever Ibrahim's drummer, George Gray, kicked up a shuffling beat. There was a hint of Ellington's “jungle” colour too. But the piece as a whole was grossly overextended. Ibrahim took over for a cadenza at the close, but his tentative playing added little of substance.

Earlier, a handful of singers, including Pete Churchill, Ian Shaw and Cleveland Watkiss, made the best of the wooden lyrics on small group settings such as Blue Bolero, The Mountain and the painfully sentimental Cape Town. Stan Sulzman added some typically stylish arabesques, but the combination of voices and instruments never really gelled.

The evening had opened with one of Ibrahim's languorous piano solos, from which slowly emerged the stately chords of Blues for a Hip King, the standard dedicated to the ruler of Swaziland. The meeting with the BBC Big Band proved efficient, but a little colourless. While Monk's I Mean You had a swagger about it, Ibrahim's minimalist phrases struggled to make themselves heard above the brass.

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