This year’s festival also includes Dinah Washington influenced singer/pianist Champian Fulton, and the Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra performing works from Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, while Muddy Water’s centenary is marked with a special concert featuring his eldest son, Mud Morganfield. The jazz festival also gets the city’s ‘festival season’ underway, bringing jazz to the streets and parks of Edinburgh for the Mardi Gras on Saturday 20 July and the second ever Edinburgh Festival Carnival on Sunday 21 July.

– Mike Flynn

For more info go to www.edinburghjazzfestival.com

When he does emerge, the jury remains out as he chats at length, seemingly reluctant to drum. Alternately rambling and sharp, he’s on his own wavelength, much like Elvis’s 1970s gig soliloquies. “What did he mean?” he imagines us pondering. “What makes him special? Is his drumming really that good? The place was crowded…”

Finally, normal service is resumed, for a couple of songs. Then Haynes begins a solo, and sometime in the maybe 30 minutes that follow, his band realise they’ve become redundant. Haynes pulls every possibility from every inch of his kit: tapping and finely calibrating the hi-hat’s timbre and volume, while stilling its reverberation with his fingers; finding brittle tones on the kit’s edge, and placing an elbow on a drum to gently shift its sound. He appears to listen attentively as each element is tested, a showman letting us know he’s a scientist of the drum. Steady grooves regularly lead into thundering flurries so fierce his bass-pedal snaps. Faced with this handicap, he murmurs equably, “I’ll think up something else to play.” When someone breaks the spell with a gargling cough, he jokes, “I needed a rest anyway.” Twice he steps away for applause, then continues, and only in these final stretches does the solo’s resource start to flag. With no kit left unexplored, he plays himself, rapping on his leg, then tap-dancing.

I saw Art Blakey in his last year play similar tricks with his kit, and Antonio Sanchez is among the fine, younger drummers we’re blessed with today. But this was the greatest drumming I’ve seen. Was he any better at 28, or 68? A friend suggests that, for durability of genius, Haynes is giving Picasso competition.

And even then, that’s not it, as he leads a long sing-along on Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’. ‘You’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em,’ it goes, ‘know when to fold ‘em…’ Not ready to fold, Haynes asks the band if there’s a third set. On nights like this, he isn’t drinking from the fountain of youth so much as handing out generous doses from it. Maybe we do need it more than Roy Haynes. He's still the best drummer in the room.

– Nick Hasted

There’s also a tribute to trumpeter, bandleader and educator Abram Wilson, who died in 2012, which will feature his band of pianist Reuben James, bassist Alex Davies and drummer Dave Hamblett, performing with Jason Marsalis, Jean Toussaint and saxophonist Keith Loftus at the Purcell Room on 20 November, while Gwilym Simcock plays a special solo concert at St Stephen’s, Hampstead on 19 November, and acclaimed Norwegian pianist Ketil Bjørnstad brings his Story of Edvard Munch project, with Kari Bremnes, to the Purcell Room on 21 November. These latest names are in addition to the headliners exclusively announced last month by Jazzwise, including Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Remember Shakti and Hugh Masekela.

– Jon Newey

For ticket booking details and more information go to www.londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Entering the 2012 Music-For-Youth Festival, which enabled them to perform at various venues around the country, the group won two awards, and they’ve since decided to step things up a gear launching a Kickstarter crowd-sourcing project to raise funds for a professionally produced album pressed on to 1,000 CDs. Having generated a buzz online the band are already on target to have enough to record the album, and they plan to use any further funds to help pay for a five date UK tour in August 2014, and an album launch gig at a high profile London venue – the closing date for the Kickstarter campaign is 28 May.

Plummer, who leads the band on guitar, commented on the quality and high level of this project: “Even as a bandleader with other professional bands, this is truly one of the most exciting things I do!” The project also echoes some of the pioneering work late great British trumpeter Ian Carr did with his jazz workshop at the Interchange Arts Scheme, which helped mentor the likes of the Mondesir Brothers, Dave Okumu and Finn Peters – inspiring a young generation of musicians to experiment, improvise and embrace music from a wide range of sources, perform live and take risks musically.

– Mike Flynn

For more info and to back the Kickstarter campaign go to www.rhythmsticks.org