In bringing together an 85-year-old CBE, a sax-playing child of the expressionist 1960s who has exported his unique sonic language to the world, and a drummer, teacher and record-label founder devoted to British music, the Vortex might well have been offering its own made-in-Britain tribute 24 hours before Danny Boyle's. In truth it was just another night's work for the octogenarian jazz-piano star Stan Tracey, his drummer son Clark, and the unique improvising saxophonist Evan Parker – but with one big difference.

Parker (who reinvented the sax in the 60s and 70s as an abstract sound-source, and hardly studied regular harmony) and the two Traceys (who come out of the song-rooted jazz tradition) rarely attempt to bring their very divergent jazz approaches together. But their three all-improv sets at the Vortex, as two duos and a trio, were well worth witnessing.

The first set opened with Parker respectfully following Stan Tracey's skipping treble-note dances, boogieing bass-walks and holding-pattern trills with a mix of rich, long tones and bursting runs. Deepening empathy soon let good ideas run longer – into swooping, horror-movie atmospherics, or minimalist piano rumbles under dramatic circular-breathing sax passages. Juggled together with a more orthodox lyricism, Stan and Clark then explored spontaneous motifs like skewed standard-songs, punchy clamours like big-band horn parts, and hymn-like harmonies that connected Tracey to Abdullah Ibrahim and to their mutual inspiration, Duke Ellington.

The intensity level shifted a further notch in the trio's finale, with Parker's fierce, tearing tenor-sax sound erupting over a piano trill and Clark Tracey's earthy tom-tom figures; the saxophonist held the room gripped by his famous resourcefulness as an unaccompanied improviser. It was all the work of vastly experienced old hands, but the meeting jarred them all out of their comfort zones.

• The Stan Tracey Quartet play the Brecon jazz festival on 12 August. Details: 0844 858 8521.