The Derby Jazz festival has been celebrating jazz for 25 years, and this year, Midlands celebrities previously feted at the event (including guitarist Phil Robson, and saxophonists Julian Siegel and Dave O'Higgins) came back to say thanks. Even composer Graham Collier, the first to play a Derby Jazz date, returned to direct the skilful East Midlands Youth Jazz Orchestra. Hearing Collier rehearsing his swelling brass chords behind long-time associate Harry Beckett's skipping trumpet lines was a reminder of what a special place the two of them occupy in UK jazz evolution.

Corey Mwamba, the balletic young Derby vibraphonist, played the Derby commission Argentum. Mwamba's work resembles F-ire Collective pianist Robert Mitchell's in its deceptive art-music diversions from apparent street-sharp hooks. Mitchell was in the band and at his awesome best in a series of trenchant, freely streaming, adapted-Hancock solos, echoed by Mwamba's mix of rhythmically driving fast playing and dreamy textural effects. But if the soloing was strong, melodies were sometimes reticent. Not so with Siegel's virtuoso postbop quartet, nor with the warm-toned jazz-funk from the three-horn front line of Dave O'Higgins' Most Wanted.

But the sensation was guitarist Phil Robson's Six Strings and the Beat project, for guitar trio and string quartet. Robson elicited full-on improv from violinist Emma Smith and the remarkable cellist Kate Short (who, on an Oumou Sangare tribute, sounded like a kora player), and they made an appropriately wild sound behind his flying guitar lines on an Ornette Coleman dedication. Peter Herbert's bass solos were jaw-dropping, and drummer Gene Calderazzo was as laconically propulsive as ever. This inspired crossover is a real achievement for Robson and should go down among the year's jazz landmarks.