With a Michael Parkinson music show broadcase from Cheltenham Town Hall, and Radio 2 joining long-time backers Radio 3 as sponsors, the Cheltenham Jazz festival might seem to be losing its characteristic appetite for the unusual.

But nobody thrown back in their seat by the punky howl of Alice Grant's singing with drummer Seb Rochford's group, or hypnotised by the mix of free jazz and percussion fireworks of New York's Claudia Quintet, could end up at that conclusion. Even 78-year-old trombone legend and artist-in-residence Bob Brookmeyer's straight-swinging quartet set in the evening had the glow of music being made afresh.

Gwilym Simcock, the young British piano prodigy, played the richly-layered, motif-packed Lichfield Suite for big band, and also featured an audaciously reharmonised account of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.

Drummer John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet (with vibraphone virtuoso Matt Moran) featured strong original melodies easing between folk music, uncliched grooving and free-noise.

Rochford's subtle drumming made an intriguing contrast with Grant's whispers and chainsaw wails in a lineup of Fulborn Teversham that was missing (almost inevitably) Babyshambles guitarist Patrick Walden.

Brookmeyer's quartet (also deftly driven by Hollenbeck, and with punchy guitar improvising from Brad Shepik) sometimes muffled the breezy originality of his themes, but it was fascinating to witness such a fertile creator of postwar jazz still so absorbed by the chase.