This year's autumn jazz festivals in Belgrade and Pancevo (just 25kms away from Belgrade) showed once again the passion and reverence the Balkan countries have when it comes to jazz.
For the first five minutes at least, there must have been many in tonight's audience in agreement with New-Yorker Oz Noy's quote in the programme notes that his "music is jazz, it just doesn't sound like it".
With the E-Type Boys, south Londoner Maxi Jazz is exploring a funky, rocky seam, with jazz inflections, away from Faithless, the seminal electronica dance act that has been his main gig since the mid-1990s.
Bugge Wesseltoft's Kings Place residency began with a night celebrating 20 years of his Jazzland Recordings featuring two of the label's flagship acts.
"Come on, you motherf*****rs!" roars an imposing six-foot clown in white make-up and gold epaulettes while a suitably testosterone-fuelled brass section punctuate his spoken word with punchy, sharp retorts.
A thunder of Afro-Jazz drums roared across the stage during the climactic highlight of a remarkable all-star show, dedicated to the memory of the late Jack Bruce.
Andrew Bain is a truly transatlantic talent, dividing his time between Manhattan and Birmingham UK, with an impressive list of musical and educational attainments behind him.
In 1968, the inaugural year of the Umea Jazz Festival in Sweden, an all-conquering cohort of six-string heroes were wiring Fenders and Gibsons into the frontal cortex of popular culture, the ongoing brainwaves of which can be seen in the truly astounding Guitar Museum that is around the corner from the multi-purpose Folkets Huus, whose several auditoriums host some 45 gigs in four days.
On Monday night, the Jazz Nursery journeyed to The Vortex from its new home at the i'klectik arts lab in Waterloo, to showcase a special nonet packed with emerging talent.
Black History Month rightfully seeks to expand views of Africa and its Diaspora, but there are usually glaring blind spots.
