The Jazz Weekend segment of the Bath International Music Festival is a highlight of the jazz calendar. As well as attracting a high standard of performers, they attract great listeners, which gives programmers Heloise Osborne and Nod Knowles more freedom than other festival supremos. And it's good value: with a £45 pass you can see more than a dozen acts, including Systeme D, Ballamy/ Carstensen, Soweto Kinch and Courtney Pine.
EST is the perfect act to start the weekend, combining adventurous creativity with full-on entertainment. This is a band that's so professional, they even use a smoke machine and rock-style lighting on live radio - they stay on to play a BBC Radio 3 broadcast.
However EST goes beyond professionalism, with a talent for communicating directly to a full hall of both curious neophytes and jazz obsessives. Everything the trio plays - from the powerful onslaught of Elevation of Love to the free-flowing variations of mood and pace within When God Created the Coffeebreak - is superbly constructed, whether improvised or written. And all three make clever use of studio-quality electronic effects on their acoustic instruments. Drummer Magnus Ostrom combines a lightness of touch with the solid pulse that's essential to their ensemble style. Pianist Esbjorn Svensson has achieved that difficult goal of sounding entirely, and only, like himself. Dan Berglund is a star, whether pounding out power chords and monster riffs on his double bass, playing fast, effortless unisons with Svensson's left hand, or taking the lead with heart-wrenching arco solos.
Other highlights include a riveting, theatrical performance by Swiss duo Stimmhorn, complete with gargantuan alpenhorns, startling overtone singing and a sawn-off accordion. John Law and François Corneloup deliver Euro-jazz at its spine-tingling best. John Rae's Celtic Feet/ Hungarian Collaboration yields a tangy cocktail of folk-inflected jazz, including the melancholy flavours of Mihaly Farkas (cimbalom) and Robi Farkas (violin), and the prodigious talents of pianist Brian Kellock.
