The highly-anticipated Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis residency at the Barbican in London features the first of the Barbican Hall concerts of the weekend, Swinging Beginnings, tonight at 7.30pm.

Tomorrow Wynton Marsalis will give the keynote address of the residency at 1pm in the Barbican Theatre. The talk is free to Jazzwise and jazzwisemagazine.com readers who come to the Barbican by 12.45pm on the day and ask for a ticket at the advance box office desk. In the evening, JALCO will perform Bebop and Beyond in the Barbican Hall at 8pm.

Saturday evening’s concert features primarily UK artists alongside some JALCO members in a Barbican Hall performance at 7.30pm entitled Big Band Britannia: Inspirations and Collaborations. Earlier in the day a morning 10am performance of Essentially Ellington UK, the first UK running of a high school jazz band programme organised by Jazz At Lincoln Center in New York, takes place.

The following day’s events feature JALCO once again, this time performing at the Hackney Empire. At 3pm there on Sunday the theme is a family concert, Jazz For Young People, featuring new arrangements of familiar children’s songs. Then at 7.30pm, JALCO performs modern jazz classics, including Marsalis originals and arrangements of music by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.

In addition to the events at the Barbican and Hackney Empire, JALCO players will be featured in a variety of other performances, including A Midsummer Night’s Swing with Guy Barker, tonight at 9pm in Stoke Newington Town Hall, and in a series of late-night jam sessions at the Vortex in Dalston also beginning tonight. Several well-known UK artists will be featured in Barbican FreeStage events and at the jam sessions.

After the weekend residency in London, JALCO tours nationally starting on Tuesday. Venues and dates are: Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (22 June); The Dome, Brighton (24); Symphony Hall, Birmingham (25); The Sage, Gateshead (26), and the Glasgow Jazz Festival (27).

– Nivedita Sarnath

For more info and tickets, go to bit.ly/bhOdOQ and for Vortex concert and jam session details, www.vortexjazz.co.uk