Sonny Saturday

How you all doing? Well plenty to get up and at ’em around and about today. The mavericks’ mavericks The Bad Plus are at Kings Place this afternoon and in the evening when they team up with the mavericks’ mavericks’ maverick, Django Bates; you can sing, sing, sing if you like at the Purcell Room with Richard Pite and friends doing Benny Goodman and going east to the Vortex there’s a Hammond special with Decoy, MA and the new band everyone’s talking about, Big Cat.

Matthew Herbert is making news in more senses than one when he takes his day in the life of the pages of The Guardian to centrestage at the Festival Hall with the London Sinfonietta. Ute Lemper has cancelled but over at the Theatre Royal in Stratford the Creole Choir of Cuba are worth checking out with songs of the Haitian diaspora, while the songs of Billy Strayhorn are in the spotlight courtesy of Frank Griffith and Alex Webb with the all-important deathless material interpreted by China Moses and Alexander Stewart. That’s at the Purcell Room. For sheer stamina and special skills with a street map you’ve got to hand it to Brass Jaw who give a workshop at the Spirit Level of the RFH this morning and then pop up again in Greenwich at the National Maritime Museum, and in one of the more remarkable feats of programming today there’s an audience with Keith Tippett again at the Spirit Level. Expect a few home truths.

Neon with newbie Kit Downes now a member are part of the Edition records free entry showcase at the Barbican from 3pm with some great bands put on by the hip Cardiff label. Outhouse featuring Hilmar Jensson are over at the Clore Ballroom on the South Bank from six, while in Camden check out vibes master Orphy Robinson at the Forge. Soulful Natalie Williams comes to Artsdepot in Finchley tonight, while in south east London at the Albany Arun Ghosh presents his innovative Afrocoustics and Indo-vations. There's a saxophone summit with the marvellous Peter King at the 606 and in a day which belongs above all to the saxophone colossus himself on his 80th birthday tour it’s Sonny Rollins (pictured) at the Barbican. Defiinitely a case, if ever there was one, of don't stop this particular LJF carnival.

– Stephen Graham

Photo: Tim Dickeson