JAZZ DIARY / Summertime, and the living is easy: Phil Johnson on the festival merry-go-round, saxophonist Ed Jones and a jazz-rap crossover that really works

THE START of the annual round of jazz festivals, like news stories about New Age travellers or outdoor raves, is one of the few reliable indicators that summer is upon us, whatever the weather. There's something timeless too, about the procession of often superannuated American musicians who pitch camp night after night, from May to September each year, in the festival grounds of Europe. Over- paid, over-saxed and over here they may be, as British musicians sometimes complain, but a festival tends to be measured by the number of famous US names on the programme, regardless of present form.

Dazed from too much travel, occasionally unsure what country they are playing, veteran American jazz musicians are like foreign guest-workers, forced by lack of resources at home to hire out their labour on the open market. There's plenty of seasonal work available, too, as jazz festivals have sprung up throughout the land. If the festival sometimes looks more like part of some marketing plan to raise the civic profile than a purely musical feast, that's all by the way. Forget the dodgy PA and the trumpeter's glazed look; the point is to enjoy.

In this context, the inauguration of a brand new jazz festival at first glance looks like just another addition to the listings. But the London Jazz Festival, which runs from 14-23 May, is something special. Taking over from the often innovative Camden Jazz Festival, which after 15 years has expired from lack of funds, LJF is planned as an annual event, dedicated to bringing in rarely heard foreign artists alongside local musicians and offering a wide-ranging education and workshop programme, plus commissions for composers. While this year's event is based around the boroughs of Camden, Islington and Hackney, the hope is to bring in more boroughs and gradually spread the attractions, and the funding, city-wide.

The organiser, John Cumming, from Serious and Speakout Promotions, says that: 'There was an increasing feeling that the city didn't have a big, high-profile festival that would reflect the entire spectrum of music and celebrate what's going on day by day and year by year.' With funding of pounds 150,000 coming from the boroughs, London Arts Board and Grants Committee and Hackney's Cilntech enterprise council, plus media sponsorship from the Observer, Time Out, Radio 3 and Jazz FM, the festival is challenging Glasgow as the biggest and best event going. Even the big-name Americans are refreshingly young, with the Rebirth Brass Band, the World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Craig Harris and Al Di Meola on the bill, alongside Abdullah Ibrahim, John Surman's Brass Project and even Humphrey Lyttelton and Acker Bilk. 'Where else,' says Cumming, 'can you get 100 years of jazz in 10 days?'

For further information call the London Jazz Festival Hotline on 071-911 1652.

THERE are few sounds in jazz as exciting as a tenor saxophone solo played at full throttle. It's something of a spectacle, too, when the horn's open-throated roar is accompanied by all the gestures of the committed tenor-person: feet apart, knees bent, elbows pumping in and out, while neck-muscles bulge with the effort of gulping up air from deep in the stomach. Ed Jones is such a player: a tenor sax hero who looks and sounds like he means what he plays. Like the masters of the form, Rollins or Coltrane, Jones puts his all into a performance.

Touted four years ago as the next big thing after Courtney Pine, Andy Sheppard, Tommy Smith and Steve Williamson, Jones missed the boat as far as record contracts were concerned, but he has continued to play gigs around the country with an energy and commitment that few other players can match. Now 31, he's about to embark on a tour for Jazz Services, taking what is probably the best regular band in Britain - Jonathan Gee on piano, Wayne Batchelor on bass and Brian Abrahams on drums. For Jones: 'The cult of the individual is a dodgy one. Music is about a co-operative thing and with this band there's a mix of personalities, all bringing different voices to what we play.' On the modus operandi of tenor playing Jones says that: 'It's very exciting taking a big breath and hoping that you get to the end of it without tripping up.' Jones also plays soprano sax and wooden flutes, where he edges towards atmospheric Jan Garbarek territory; but it's as a hard-blowing tenor player in the traditional mould that he really excels.

The Ed Jones Quartet play Wakefield Jazz Club (14 May); York Arts Centre (15 May); Four Bars Inn, Cardiff (20); Brighton Jazz Club (21); and continue touring until Friday 4 June.

DESPITE lots of promotional puff, the promised marriage between jazz and rap has never really lived up to the hype. From the rap side of the fence, Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest have created a lot of jazzy slogans but their music has remained well within the limits of the genre. On the jazz, er, tip, the hip-hop experiments of New York musicians such as Steve Coleman and Greg Osby have often seemed to have more in common with the gratuitous time-changes and earnest bearing of British pomp- rock. At last things seem to be changing. Osby's latest album, 3-D Lifestyles (Blue Note), blends hard gangster-rap lyrics with real improvisations on alto and soprano sax. Island Records' sampler The Rebirth of Cool 3 also has a number of interesting jazz-rap tracks, including the superb 'Inner City Boundaries' by LA's Freestyle Fellowship. Here, the lyrics - spoken against a riff from real double bass and vibes - aspire to the talking-in- rhythm style pioneered by bebop singers like King Pleasure in the Forties. Disappointingly, the group's own album mainly returns to a more lumpen gangster-rap mode, heavy on the Oedipal nouns. Whether Freestyle Fellowship can cut the jazz stuff live can be judged on the 'Rebirth of Cool' tour later this month.

The Rebirth of Cool tour plays Leeds Polytechnic (13 May); Nottingham Trent University (14); Manchester Academy (15); Bristol Lakota (16); Glasgow, The Tunnel (18); Newcastle Riverside (19); Windsor DIG (20) and London Forum (21). The album is available from Island's 4th and Broadway (all formats).

(Photograph omitted)