No matter how you cut it, Henry Butler is a fantastic pianist. Performing solo last week at Whelan's, he showed he has all bases covered - virtuoso technique, themes buried under baroque edifices of harmonic thought, through which occasional shards of the original sometimes were allowed through, melodic lines that abruptly and unexpectedly changed direction as his fertile and capricious imagination dictated, breathtaking two-handed unison passages, flawlessly executed, cross rhythms, broken rhythms, tempo and time signature changes - it was like a history lesson in jazz, blues, gospel and contemporary New Orleans funk, put over with sophisticated wit and sunny good humour.

The influences were clearly discernible - Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Phineas Newborn, James Booker, Professor Longhair - and evident in the choice of material and the manner of its treatment. An incredibly oblique, ruminative, out-of-tempo rhapsody would turn into a rocking John Brown's Body or Ain't Misbehavin', with Tatum arabesques, Waller stride and Newborn unisons decorating the pieces. With so much at his command, he could transform such weary stuff as When The Saints Go Marching In into a gospel experience, or St. Louis Blues into something fresh, its rhythmic adventurousness all the while supported by an implacably correct pulse. Exoticism like Caravan was meat and drink to him, while a blues like Mardi Gras In New Orleans (replete with a Jimmy Yancey modulation at the end), showed he had instrumental and vocal roots beyond reproach. Not so the keyboard he was obliged to use, which had a mind of its own. Butler made light of the challenge, but if he comes again, it will have to be a grand piano for a talent which is the closest we'll ever get to hearing someone of the calibre of the late, great Art Tatum in the flesh.