n A venture beginning in the Tron Theatre's Victorian Bar on Tuesday aims to give Glasgow a new, regular jazz venue. Outside of the Jazz Festival and the Jazz Co-op's monthly mainstream concerts, gigs by visiting musicians have tended to come in fits and starts lately.

By hooking up with promoters already working in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and elsewhere, the organisers hope to form a Scottish touring network which will promote, all year round, artists such as Tuesday's guests, the London-based Dave O'Higgins Quartet.

O'Higgins has brought his saxophone cases on umpteen trips to Scotland over the past 10 years, but probably never will you have found him playing in the same musical situation on consecutive visits.

Smooth mainstream jazz with Cleo Laine & John Dankworth, tough, decidedly urban jazz/rock with guitarist Jim Mullen's band, breezy gipsy jazz with Martin Taylor's Spirit of Django, blowing sessions with New York vibraphonist Joe Locke - O'Higgins has slipped into each one as if it's his main gig.

This versatility gets O'Higgins around geographically as well as musically. He slots his appearances at the two Trons (the Quartet plays Edinburgh's Tron Jazz Cellar on Wednesday) in between a month-long visit to Australia and a completed nine-week trip to South Africa, where he toured and recorded a CD with, African fusion-styled Short Attention Span Ensemble as well as working in a straightahead jazz quartet.

Although the hard-driving but flexible Quartet, with long-time associate, bassist Alec Dankworth, pianist Robin Aspland and the dynamic New York-born, London-based drummer Gene Calderazzo, is where O'Higgins feels most at ease, the stylistic ducking and diving of his freelance work is more than just a means of paying the rent.

''I enjoy a lot of variety,'' he says. ''Playing in combinations with different musicians keeps me on my toes. ''

Birmingham-born O'Higgins, who first came to notice in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, moved to London in 1983 and quickly became established on the jazz scene.

His enthusiasm and ability to turn up and turn on the style to order also earned him a strong reputation on the ''session'' scene - work which many jazz musicians accept almost under sufferance but which O'Higgins, who has answered the call from, among others, Frank Sinatra, the Pet Shop Boys and Mr Bean, genuinely enjoys.

''You know, there's a tradition in jazz which says, you don't read music, do everything your own way and forget about doing the disciplined things,'' he says.

''But I find that attitude too closed. If you go in and do something at short notice and you read it correctly, play it in time and in tune, then it helps your all-round musicianship.''