The week in jazz – July 25 – 31

Contemporary jazz bass player Greg Cordez (pictured above with Nick Malcolm) is heading for the Manchester Jazz festival this weekend with his quintet, hot on the heels of Michelson Morley who played there last week. Greg’s playing a warm-up gig in Bristol on Friday 29 (Colston Hall Foyer) and with work under way on a new album there should be some fresh pieces to unveil. Greg’s maturity as a composer is as recognised as his musicianship on the bass and the band is a bona fide ‘all star’ outfit with Jake McMurchie (sax), Nick Malcolm (trumpet), Jim Blomfield (piano) and Mark Whitlam (drums).

There’s a couple of M4 corridor collaborations worth checking out this week, too: London’s Percy Pursglove (above) has become a fairly regular visitor to Bristol’s Fringe jazz sessions, with his impressive parallel skills on trumpet and bass making him a handy contributor in a small group setting. The trio Perdato (Fringe, Wednesday 27) was one of those one-off things that proved too successful to let slip away, combining Percy’s multi-instrumentalism with Pushy Doctors Dan Moore and Tony Orrell. With three such excellent improvising imaginations their occasional appearance remains one of the highlights of the Fringe calendar. The same night sees Canteen welcome Audio Flowers, a new, locally-based band put together by London guitarist Giles Barratt. Giles discovered the Bristol scene a couple of years ago having lived and worked in Poland and his eclectic style mix ranges from contemporary to Latin via trip-hop.

Hopefully things will be cooling off after last week’s swelterfest, but Brazilian vibes are particularly well suited to the weather, of course, so it’s nice to see Balança guitarist Tristram Cox claiming the limelight for once (Future Inn, Thursday 28). Known as a deft exponent of Latin jazz and bossa nova he’s also an enthusiastic contemporary jazz player in the trio Miyako. By contrast that evening, down at No 1 Harbourside, you could catch the intriguing duo of Dakhla Brass alto sax player Sophie Stockham (above) with full-tilt Hammond exponent Jonny Henderson, no doubt cutting a rug in the boogaloo style.

And finally there’s some splendidly left field business going on down at Arnolfini which, while not strictly jazz, might please the more free minded hepcats amongst us. As part of the gallery’s Moving Targets punk retrospective season you can catch the uncategorisable Blurt (Arnolfini, Saturday 30), with the mighty Ted Milton’s relentless mix of poetry, rant and incendiary saxophone the engine of the band’s post-punk jazz fusion, followed on Sunday by an outside performance from contemporary threesome Charismatic Megafauna with their startling meltdown of drums, vocals and theatricality. Both acts are wondrous strange and powerfully musical. Possibly not everybody’s idea of jazz but – hey! – you have been warned.