There was a time when jazz purists were sniffy about the Hammond organ; playing it, they said, was like trying to sign your name with a shaving brush. Well, nobody uses shaving brushes anymore and, at 30, Larry Goldings is unlikely to carry one in his travelling bag. But he's at the cutting edge of those who have helped to bring the organ back to a measure of popularity in jazz - younger players like himself, the high-profile Joey DeFrancesco and the slightly older Barbara Dennerlein, as well as veterans like Jimmy Smith, who first forged a role for the instrument in the music, Lonnie Liston Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and the late Groove Holmes.

Goldings doesn't play quite like any of these. He can do, and has done, the funky stuff, having worked and recorded with Maceo Parker, the effulgent alto saxophonist from soul singer James Brown's backing group. But anyone familiar with Goldings's Awareness album, recorded just over two years ago with himself on piano, drummer Paul Motian and bassist Larry Grenadier, will recognise a musician who is also open, adventurous and determined not to be confined to well-worn paths.

On a personal level, he's patient, modest and articulate, with the wry sense of humour that seems to go with the territory for jazz musicians. He retains much of the accent of his native Boston, which is where he heard his first jazz records, by pianists Dave McKenna and Oscar Peterson.

"There's a link perhaps," he says, "between my listening to Dave McKenna and going to the organ later, because he often played solo and played really great, rolling bass lines, and that was the only thing I knew when it came to playing solo."

His parents helped to expand that by sending him to summer music camp for four consecutive years from the age of 11. "By then I was getting into fusion, but I hadn't really done my history on jazz. The camps got me hooked and by the time I was 15 or 16 I had started studying with some more serious teachers in the Boston area."

Those teachers included Peter Cassino and the more widely-known, avant gardist Ran Blake. "He was into contemporary classical music, eclecticism really, and exposed me to as much music as possible. I was also lucky enough to take three or four lessons with Keith Jarrett. Although they're blurs to me now because" - he laughs - "I was a little bit starstruck, they were great experiences."

Other great experiences included listening to all of Miles Davis's groups, which he describes as "my dictionary". He mentions two of Davis's pianists, the swinging, exuberant, song-like Wynton Kelly, and the more introverted, poetic Bill Evans, both of whom have qualities he values.

"Evans? He was a big influence by that point. All those early influences are people who I have a hard time listening to today because I love them so much," he laughs ruefully. "For years I tried to drop those influences so that they weren't so obvious. And it might be a subconscious reason why I went to the organ."

That was later when, as jazz musicians must, he plunged into the sink-or-swim musical vortex of the Big Apple in 1986. There he met the long-term colleagues who will be with him in Dublin: guitarist Peter Bernstein - initially through attending the celebrated Eastman School of Music - and drummer Bill Stewart.

So why the organ? "I was always a big fan of the gospel/soul type of organ, such as Billy Preston on Aretha Franklin records as well as Jimmy Smith, particularly the Jimmy Smith/ Wes Montgomery and Mel Rhyne/Wes Montgomery records. "I loved the organ part of it, which might have been because I loved the control of being able to carry the bass. In some ways it was limiting, but you can decide the bass line and the direction where the music's going a little bit more. And I loved the feeling of hooking up with the drummer in that way."

He also got an inadvertent push to the organ from a drummer friend, Leon Parker, who asked him to bring a keyboard and "just walk bass lines" at a dive near Harlem. It brought him more direct experience of organ and he eventually bought one. Despite the fact that the club was a place "where we literally passed the bucket to get paid" the band was good. It included at times the fine altoist, Jessie Davis and, eventually, Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart.

That was the start of the trio which has been together, on and off, since 1988. In between both Goldings and Stewart have worked with Maceo Parker and Bernstein has spent a year with the notable young tenor, Joshua Redman. In the meantime, Goldings's own broad experience has included musicians as diverse as singer Jon Hendricks and guitarists Jim Hall and John Scofield.

What was it like working with Scofield, a hugely different player from the more contemplative Hall or the ebullient Maceo Parker?

"John is a great musician and composer. He knows everything about harmony, but at the same time he has that blues/rock feel. I played organ with him and learned so much about his musical language, which is very unique, and about the way he integrates his blues flavour with his more sophisticated side - not that blues isn't sophisticated, but you know what I mean. His influences range from Ornette Coleman to James Brown to Jimi Hendrix and he has fused all that together in a really personal way, which was very educational for me.

"I'm speaking not only of the form of the blues, but of how he constructs his lines, how he takes the blues influence and fuses it with Ornette's sensibility. He's one of those guys who has achieved what I'm trying to achieve and that is: when you turn on the radio and you hear John Scofield, there's no doubt that it's John. The same goes for Bill Stewart."

With so much accumulated jazz history, Goldings faces a problem that is endemic among serious young jazz musicians. How to absorb that history and produce a coherent individual statement without sounding like a collection of bits and pieces?

"I get a little bogged down with that sometimes," he acknowledges. "Nowadays, there are certain gigs I won't take if I know that I'm going to be made to play a certain way. For instance, I've had a funny experience playing with the mainstream tenor player Harry Allen. I love his playing and the fact that he plays obscure, beautiful tunes and knows a lot about harmony.

"But I've had a problem playing with him sometimes, because I fall into these old influences, you know. I think: `Oh, there's that Oscar Peterson lick I haven't played in 10 years and I'm trying not to do that, because I'm trying to find my own sound but it sounds so good with this music'. Yet it's fun, so I let it go because I want to play with Harry sometimes.

"But more and more I feel the organ is my voice. I think I've found a way to still sound like myself, even if my style is changing a little bit, depending on who I'm playing with."

The truth of that may well be demonstrated next Sunday. And not a shaving brush in sight.

Larry Goldings plays at Whelans next Sunday.