Michael Janisch was headed for a career in American football until injury drew him back to music, his first love. The expat jazz-bassist, producer, teacher and now festival-director runs the thriving UK indie Whirlwind Records, promoting its three‑day Kings Place festival and playing awesomely virtuosic double bass on at least half the gigs: the stamina from those early years of training seems to have held up. Two of Janisch's greatest and most absorbing challenges surfaced in the contrasting bands of New York saxophonist Patrick Cornelius, and in the rhythm-bending trio of British vibraphonist Jim Hart.

Cornelius's alto-sax has an arresting range – softly rounded as a flute on tremor-free long sounds, searingly intense at speed. He began on Saturday afternoon with the staccato and snaking Puzzler (from new album Infinite Blue) and immediately threw its devious demands at his London pianist, Jason Rebello, who characteristically didn't blink, uncorking the first of a string of solos that managed to be headlong and elegant at once. Cornelius was fierce on Puzzler, poignantly fragile on Infinite Blue and In the Quiet Moments (the former in mellow counterpoint with fine American trombonist Nick Vayenas). Eventually, he was explosively uninhibited on the uptempo Regent Street, with Janisch and drummer Andrew Bain fuelling the fire.

Now wearing a pork pie hat (as if to fool the audience, or even himself, that he wasn't really the same bass-playing glutton for punishment), Janisch reappeared with Hart. With superb Dave Smith on drums, their trio was a little closer to the rhythmic cutting‑edge than Cornelius's group. Hart savoured the vibraphone's tonal glow, balletic lightness and unexpectedly intense chords on several fast pieces (unerringly pursued by Smith). The vibraphonist produced some improv abstractions using violin bows on the edges of the bars and passages of glistening cool swing. An imminent album from this trio is a very appealing prospect.

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