The return of Loose Tubes to the Cheltenham jazz festival after 24 years could have been the biggest damp squib in recent jazz history. But in the opening second of their reunion debut at Cheltenham, the 21-piece band put the hearts of anxious fans in their mouths and sprayed sparks straight through to a standing ovation.
Having rewritten the book on European big-band jazz in six years before splitting in 1990, the Tubes had plenty riding on this packed set of old favourites, and four new BBC Radio 3 commissions. Composer and keyboardist Django Bates had traded in his all-seasons woolly hat for a natty pink trilby to mark the occasion, but otherwise only his reading glasses testified to the past quarter century as the band bounded into the busily contrapuntal and breezy old favourite Yellow Hill. The blazing slow fanfare of Sad Afrika with its hymnal singing, catchy tuba hook and penny-whistle jigging followed, while the first of the new pieces – Eddie Parker's Bright Smoke, Cold Fire – launched on a threatening old Mahavishnu Orchestra fusion riff before traversing swing, Cuban grooving and spookily abstract gusting from the flutes. Trumpeter Chris Batchelor's composition mingled South African jazz and a little of the solemn waltzing of Carla Bley, and Bates's As I Was Saying was a classic Tubes concoction of bumpy rhythmic collisions, brass shouts and cruising Latin grooves. Then there was Steve Berry's Smoke and Daffodils, an elegantly harmonised and often romantically opulent piece that unleashed the improvisers onstage.
The previous night, arranger Guy Barker had demonstrated an affably colourful, if more mainstream, large-ensemble energy with his big band, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and with soaring swing and ballad vocals from Kurt Elling, Liane Carroll and Curtis Stigers. Festival artist-in-residence Laura Mvula sang beautifully in an intimate gig with the soulful singer Eska (although the festival might consider cutting the bleed-through to quiet performances by relocating its raucous free stage away from the main venues), and saxophonist Denys Baptiste rousingly mixed gospel and Charles Mingus in his Saturday choral concert, Now's the Time. German pianist Michael Wollny's trio uncorked a superb performance of supple lyricism, improv freedom and rock-band power, while the young American trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire celebrated his famous record label Blue Note's 75th anniversary with a masterclass in virtuosity that also fused classic small-band methods with the rhythmic elasticity of his own era.
• Until 10 May. Box office: 020-7439 0747. Venue: Ronnie Scott's, London
