The subtle Dutch saxophonist Tineke Postma sounded like a jazz newcomer of real character to those present at the Pizza Express four years ago – and if the size of the Monday-night crowd didn't indicate that the word about her has spread as fast as her talent has matured, her latest London performance reinforced the impression left by her fine 2011 album Dawn of Light.

Postma writes strikingly personal contemporary pieces that nonetheless declare strong regular-jazz allegiances, and interprets them from an intelligent perspective on post-bop sax playing – touching on the methods of Wayne Shorter, Art Pepper, her American teacher David Liebman and many more. On this trip, a serious and focused Postma played the gig with her Dutch accompanying trio as a single set, mixing material from Dawn of Light with offbeat covers (a little-known Villa-Lobos theme written for the 1959 romantic movie Green Mansions, for instance), and spliced frequently high-energy acoustic forays with sparing use of the electric Fender Rhodes by regular pianist Marc van Roon. Drummer Joost van Schaik was loud for the size of the space at first, but the group expressively gelled as the show ran on.

Postma's Searching and Finding revealed her tonal scope on alto sax, beginning almost clarinet-like, developing as ruggedly soulful, Pepper-like outbursts over a catchy hook, then smoothing out into long, lissom runs. Dawn of Light's Falling Scales shuffled time-changes, faintly Thelonious Monkish melodic turns, and brisk bass-walks. The Villa-Lobos feature began as abstract musings and became a lyrical vehicle for Postma's tonal resourcefulness, as did the song-like ballad Before the Snow, but she was whoopy and urgently dramatic on soprano sax in a tempo-juggling fast feature late in the set that had the band sounding of one mind. So was the audience, which began making a lot more grateful noise than its size implied.