AS EVER with George Ivan Morrison, there is a degree of trepidation in the audience. What sort of mood will he be in?

Pre-concert conversations all around recount the good gigs and the bad, the long musical dreams and the short, stroppy outings.

Sometimes everything goes so well, sometimes nothing is right for Van, who never settles, barks at his band and leaves the stage before anyone, the audience included, has warmed up.

The writer Patrick Humphries came up with a great description in his informative little book, The Complete Guide To The Music Of Van Morrison, summing up the 59-year-old Belfast-born musician as "a songwriter of genius and an interviewer's nightmare, a grumpy old man and a transcendent soul singer". As luck, or the mood of the man, would have it, transcendent was just the word for it last night.

After a trio of numbers from his guest bluesman (who was either called James Hodder or Horner, it was hard to hear properly), Van, solidly contained in his buttoned up suit and fedora hat, came on blowing his saxophone for an instrumental number, before melding into Have I Told You Lately. Never one of Van's best songs, this time it swung nicely, suggesting good things to come.

And so it sweetly proved. Over two hours, Van and his six-piece band, performed 21 songs from across the rich seams of his long years in Celtic soul, blues and jazz.

What's Wrong With This Picture?, the title track from his most recent album, came later on (song 14), while also from that album we had Whinin' Boy Moan, Once In A Blue Moon, and a lovely version of the traditional song, Saint James Infirmary.

The jazzy band - saxophones, trumpet, bass, drums, guitar and keyboards - were top notch, so good that Van did not snarl or snap once. By the time they reached Philosopher's Stone, from the 1999 album Back On Top, they were really playing and Morrison, his voice richer and fuller with age, seemed to swoop and caress.

The great old songs were not forgotten either, with Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile), Brown Eyed Girl and Gloria.

Some of us may have arrived a little nervously, but we left having been treated to a reminder of just what a wonderful singer and musician Van Morrison is at his best.

Updated: 11:06 Thursday, March 11, 2004