Isn't it often the way with big names? You book the concert hoping for great things and end up disappointed.

So few stars can live up to all that expectation.

Pat Metheny can. He is one of the world's top jazz guitarists, has duetted with avant garde master Ornette Coleman and has a love for the tune-free zone that is Cecil Taylor.

But tunes are what the Pat Metheny Group is about. Big ones, interwoven with breathtaking improvisations that leave your jaw in your lap.

Saturday's concert kicked off with a single hour-long piece called The Way Up - the band's latest album. It represents a departure for Metheny and his composing collaborator Lyle Mays, in that it is one long writtenout jazz symphony.

The band have been touring this album since April and were so at the top of their game that their incredible flights of improv were stitched into the whole seamlessly.

Moods changed with each "movement", ushered in with a different guitar. Metheny played umpteen of them, some acoustic, some sounding like synths, others that rocked and one in that did stunning, er, jazz.

Dense textures of sound were added by Cuong Vu on trumpet and Gregoire Maret on harmonica - both storming players who doubled up on guitar and percussion - and Mays himself on piano and keyboards.

But though The Way Up is long, when it came to its touching end the concert was barely half-way through. What followed included a lovely duet with Metheny and drummer Antonio Sanchez and a trio with Mays and bassist Steve Rodby that mined material from the guitarist's megaselling Beyond Missouri Skies.

But then the whole band reconvened with a piece which began with Metheny playing a two-necked instrument that sounded like a harp.

These guys played for nearly three hours without a break and still sounded fresh. But it wasn't just a display of technical brilliance.

Metheny is part of an upbeat American musical tradition stretching back to Copland and the world seemed a better place when we left the Dome than when we'd arrived. Considering what we'd seen, so it was.