How do you play the blues? It is an oft-asked question, but perhaps the more relevant inquiry is: how many ways can you play the blues? The answer provided by these artists was simple: as many ways as the imagination allows.

A maddeningly noisy, big-night-on-the-town crowd at the Octave bar was surely enough to give the young British tenor saxophonist Zem Adu the blues, yet he held his nerve and led his quartet with impressive maturity. Finding a fresh, propulsive take on Shorter/Henderson-stamped post-bop, Adu blended rugged and elegant tonalities, terse and torrential phrasing. His closing piece was a smart subversion of a swift blues boogie-like riff. The eloquent pianist Peter Edwards set an angular beat with a galloping right hand.

Spanish flamenco guitar legend Paco De Lucia had a reverential audience at the Royal Festival Hall, and he didn't disappoint. Playing both solo and with a jazz-inclined ensemble - flute, fretless bass, percussion and vocals - the master untangled heart-rending Arabic-inflected laments that, although a long way from the Mississippi delta, plumbed a parallel emotional depth.

Over at the Jazz Cafe, American pianist Robert Glasper, leading a sharp trio that included drum prodigy Chris Dave, showed that the blues is still an invaluable prism that can refract harmony and rhythm in ways that feel familiar but sound novel. On the one hand, Glasper displays a light, liquid touch, his lines flowing with soul balladeer grace. On the other hand, he attacks like a tanked-up stride pianist, and when Dave pummels his kick drum while displacing snare accents, the result is lopsided, viscose funk that solidifies into hip-hop. That is one way to play the blues.