Escaping arrest

Hot jazz: Scorched is based on the music of jazz guitarist John Scofield

It's not only the policemen who are getting younger: orchestral players and conductors are, too. The youngsters on the stage for the inaugural concert of the London Contemporary Orchestra on Saturday night looked as if they should have been propping up student bars instead.

Ensemble may not have been flawlessly precise but they played with huge enthusiasm and showed great promise. The venture is an eminently worthwhile one - some interesting repertoire is lined up for future concerts - and it is a pity that the work chosen for the launch was not on the same level.

Mark-Anthony Turnage's Scorched brings together an orchestra and a jazz trio (Alastair Putt, Mat Elliott and James Gambold) in a fusion of genres developed with the guitarist John Scofield. A virtue - perhaps the only virtue - of Scorched is the fluency with which Turnage moves between orchestra, big band and jazz trio modes.

But there are not two arresting ideas in the entire 75-minute piece to rub together. Not only is it a stylistic ragbag with no discernible structure, but section after section - and there are an interminable 16 of them - presents material of knuckle-gnawing banality.

Even after you've admired the metallic pillars in St Luke's and read the programme three times, there are still acres of bland terrain to be traversed: a no-man's-land that has neither the brilliant invention of true jazz nor the focused, visceral power of Turnage's earlier scores.

The LCO is a brave and welcome enterprise. I look forward to hearing them and their conductor Hugh Brunt in more essential repertoire.