Guide to the London Jazz Festival

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Cool for scat: funky bassist Esperenza Spalding plays Ronnie Scott’s

Sax appeal: see John Coltrane disciple Branford Marsalis at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

Those schooled in rock tend to have one of two reactions to jazz: either they think it's pretentious or they find it impenetrably difficult.

Both stances are silly, I have come to realise, closing off an entire ocean of music through wilful ignorance.

It was a revelatory gig by the American clarinettist David Jean-Baptiste at the Jazz Café that a more knowing schoolfriend took me to that sold me on the rush of brushed drum, piano notes that seem to flicker past, the intense questing of the reed. It sent me slightly mad, in fact - I'd never heard anything like it.

However, it is only now, when I find myself lamenting the basic incompetence and lack of imagination of most rock musicians, that I fully embrace jazzdom. (It may or may not coincide with my having grown a beard too.)

There is great solace for the jaded rock fan to be found in a fresh sea of music made by characters with far-out life stories, who can really play, who use music for a higher purpose than fashion (though the suits are sharper) and do not sound a bit like The Libertines.

Next month's London Jazz Festival provides the perfect opportunity to dive in.

The capital already boasts a number of thriving local scenes and venues that draw the legends of American and European jazz, and the 10-day festival brings past and future masters to the mix. Only please don't say "nice". No one ever says "nice".

A is for Acoustic Ladyland
Pete Wareham's tight, fractious sax quartet were the first jazz band of the London new wave to perform in rock dives and generally alarm the beards (when they appeared on Jools Holland, the genial presenter seemed to take their clattering assault as a personal insult).

They still make the perfect entry point for any doubting rock fan and their two new members, Tank Girl lookalike bassist Ruth Goller and skinhead guitarist Chris Sharkey, look like they could flatten Kasabian, too. You don't even have to wait for the festival —they're at Barden's Boudoir in Dalston tonight (020 7249 9557).

B is for Brazil
A nation with its priorities (football, music, sex) in the right place. Next month you can hear their former Minister of Culture, tropicalia pioneer Gilberto Gil, draw from his 50 or so albums' worth of tricksy, subversive, light-as-air ballads (7.30pm, Thu 19, Festival Hall).

C is for Crooning
The art was honed by Bing Crosby in the Thirties when newfangled microphone technology meant singers no longer had to bellow over big bands. The voice in jazz has come a long way since then.

The official festival opener, Jazz Voice, celebrates with Kurt Elling, Natalie Merchant and Sheila Jordan leading an all-star line-up backed by Guy Barker's large ensemble (7.30pm, Fri 13, Barbican).

For the voice unadorned, Naturally 7 are an a cappella ensemble flitting across town (7.30pm, Sun 15, Theatre Royal Stratford East; 7.30pm, Mon 16, Festival Hall; 7.30pm, Sun 22, Fairfield Croydon); or for a true master, Cleveland Watkiss, who turns 50 this year (7.30pm, Thu 19, Queen Elizabeth Hall).

D is for Dalston
London's trendiest postcode was home to the most forward-thinking jazz players long before the fashion crowd discovered it. Here in E8 you will find the Vortex, surely the London venue that punches most consistently above its weight, and the experimental melting pot, Café Oto.

E is for Europe
Land mass off the South Coast, home of many schools. Fresh From Europe (7.30pm, Sat 14, Vortex) is a good place to get acquainted, from the Estonian group UMA, who groove to an 18th-century hunting horn called the corno da caccia, to the odd Italian folk noise of guitarist Paolo Angeli.

F is for F-IRE Collective
A group of 20 or so young London musicians, residents of Kings Place, who pool resources and generally gee each other on. The finest ensemble to have emerged from the ranks is Polar Bear, whose Mercury Prize-nominated album Held on the Tips of Fingers is, for my money, one of the best in any genre of this decade: the missing link between hip American indie bands such as Animal Collective or Grizzly Bear, Led Zep's Kashmir and Coltrane. (9.30pm, Fri 20, Jazz Café).

G is for Gipsies
Fruitful source of musical fusions. The madcap speed of Dunajska Kapelye, led by the firebrand Polish violinist Piotr Jordan, has to be seen live to be believed (8.30pm, Mon 16, Vortex); for further adventures, try long-running club night Radio Gagarin (6pm, Sun 15, Notting Hill Arts Club) or Nigel Kennedy (8.30pm, Thu 19, 606), who might lob in a bit of Bach too.

H is for Hip-Hop
Miles Davis inflamed the traditionalists when he toyed with hip-hop beats in the Eighties. The genres find mutual solace in Robert Glasper, the African-American pianist whose trio do a neat line in repetitive grooves and streetwise improv, and whose trio perform with rapper Bilal (7.30pm, Sun 15, Queen Elizabeth Hall).

I is for Improvisation
Making it up as you go along: the metaphysical objective of jazz.

J is for John Coltrane (1926-1967)
Spiritual crusader, workaholic, inventor of a whole new system of harmony, sporter of a sharp zoot suit and the coolest tenor sax player ever to have circular-breathed. He died tragically young — liver failure at 40, most likely brought on by his partiality to heroin — but remains the name to drop. Eccentric singer Kurt Elling and saxophonist Ernie Watts pay tribute in Dedicated to You, which draws on the songs 'Trane composed with Johnny Hartman (7.30pm & 10.30pm, Sat 14, Pizza Express).

K is for Kenny G
Bewilderingly popular smooth multi-million seller of the Eighties — holds a position in jazz-lore somewhere between Ian Huntley and Satan.

L is for Led Bib
According to insiders, the “token” jazz band on the Mercury shortlist came within a whisker of winning the thing, following a 12 Angry Men-style last-ditch plea led by a former NME editor. They would have been the wackiest act to have done so: bandleader New Jersey-born drummer Mark Holub plus keyboardist, bassist and two sax players make the aural equivalent of a Tube crash — in a fun way. They call it “post-jazz” (8.30pm, Fri 20, Vortex).

M is for Miles Davis (1926-1991)
One of the towering geniuses of 20th-century music, Miles totally reinvented the genre at least three times and remains the best entry point to the canon: start with Kind of Blue and work from there (paying particular attention to his ambient-electric masterpiece, In a Silent Way).

Since he was so forward-thinking in choosing his fellow musicians, simply following the evolution of his bands will give you a pretty good grounding in jazz-bluff. Most of his sidemen went on to lead their own ensembles. Guitarist John Scofield (7.30pm, Fri 13, QEH) and keyboard legend Chick Corea (3pm & 7.30pm, Sun 15, Barbican) are two at the festival.

N is for Noise
As in, “But that's just noise!” In certain Dalston venues, that's precisely the point.

O is for Ornette Coleman
Curator of last year's Meltdown festival and pioneer of free jazz, the musical equivalent of contemporary art's “my five-year-old could do that” tendency. Oh, but they couldn't!

P is for Parkinson jazz
A derogatory term for the popular, pleasant, female-vocal jazz favoured by avuncular Yorkshire-born chat-show hosts, yet drawing the line is tricky. On the right side is huge-selling Madeleine Peyroux, whose smoky, reedy voice and canny choice of material (Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith) mark her out (7.30pm, Fri 20, Festival Hall).

Q is for Quintet
The fundamental line-up of drums, bass, piano, trumpet and sax has seen jazz through bebop, hardbop, the cool and modern eras.

R is for Ronnie Scott's
In its 50th year, the Soho boîte remains the heart of London jazz. The new management has redressed the dodgy programming that plagued it following its relaunch, and the balance between tourist attraction and serious venue is just right. Mind you, Mick Hucknall did play there last night.

S is for Saxophone
The electric guitar of jazz, if you will. Its most fabled living purveyor, Sonny Rollins — an authentic post-bop pioneer who helped reinvent his mentor Charlie Parker's legacy into the wry, cool, rebellious sound of the Fifties — provides the festival highlight.

The Colossus, they call him, not because he is made of bronze and hangs around Greek harbours but because he bestrides the instrument in a comparable fashion. (7.30pm, Sat 14, Barbican). Another notable master is the fierce Coltrane disciple Branford Marsalis (7.30pm, Mon 16, Queen Elizabeth Hall).

T is for Tone
Good word to drop. As in “the tone, man, the tone!”

U is for Up-and-coming
Check out Gretchen Parlato (8pm, Sun 15, Pizza Express), a highly original American diva with African and Brazilian detailing, strongly endorsed by living legends Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.

V is for Veteran
No performer comes more steeped in hard-earned history than Sheila Jordan, born 1928, singing since the Forties. She appears in the large (4pm, Sun 15, Royal Opera House) but better to catch her up close (8.30pm, Wed 18, Bull's Head, Barnes).

W is for Woodshedding
A term used by musicians to encompass both private practising (“Man, I sucked tonight, need to go shed”) and the mysterious process whereby jazz musicians tune in, or out, as the situation dictates. Sonny Rollins spent a long time woodshedding under Williamsburg Bridge, Brooklyn, in the late Fifties.

X is an extraneous letter
It is designed to defeat A-Z guides and give small children a distorted sense of the importance of the xylophone.

Y is for Yowzers!
The only proper response to the statuesque, afro'd, stiletto-sporting, scat-singing, deliciously funky bassist Esperenza Spalding (7pm, Sat 21, Ronnie Scott's).

Z is for Zoe Rahman
Another Mercury nominee, Rahman is a virtuosic pianist who draws on her Indian heritage. She's all over London this festival (7.30pm, Fri 13, Charlton House, Charlton; 8pm, Sat 14, Red Hedgehog, Highgate; 7.30pm, Sat 21, TARA, Earlsfield).

The London Jazz Festival (www.london jazzfestival.org) runs 13-22 November at the Barbican, Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott's, the Vortex, Kings Place and 57 other venues.

 

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