Cheltenham Jazz Festival
Various venues, Cheltenham, UK

The opening night of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, featuring the gloriously high-kitsch torch singer Eartha Kitt, was so oversubscribed that an extra date was scrambled into the schedule. Good-time stalwarts Van Morrison and Maceo Parker also played to packed houses on succeeding nights. Courtney Pine led a tribute to the pioneering New Orleans saxophonist Sydney Bechet and the BBC Concert Orchestra was part of a words-and-music celebration of the life of Billie Holiday. There was stuff for kids too – breakfast jazz with The Destroyers – and for students, with DJ Mr Scruff’s multimedia late-night high jinks. But the real coup was Sunday’s string of one-off UK gigs, which showcased international bandleaders debuting new projects in Europe.

I pitched up just in time to catch saxophonist Ravi Coltrane sitting in on Jack De Johnette’s lunchtime solo set at the Everyman Theatre. The master drummer was playing eloquent piano as well as his trademark percussion but, knowing that his swirling currents of polyrhythms and baroque melodies would be reprised in greater detail the following day, I moved on to the nearby Town Hall Pillar Rooms to experience a drummer of a different ilk, Bobby Previte, giving his band New Bump their first European outing.