Brecon Jazz Festival, Usk Marquee, Market Hall and Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon

Brecon's finest, back from the brink

Buddy Guy, who played a blues overture to the festival proper on a wet-and-windy Thursday night, should really wear a large sign around his neck saying, "Danger: Showman at Work". In an hysterical performance, which occasionally touched upon the sublime but settled more regularly around the ridiculous marker, the man Eric Clapton has called "the best guitar player alive" paid homage not only to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, but also to Marvin Gaye, James Brown and – bizarrely – Bill Withers. He also did a mean Eric Clapton, which was eerily accurate right down to the Home Counties-delta vocal style.

So eager was Guy to please that if you'd called out for Tommy Cooper, he'd probably have done him too. When someone shouted "Do something original!", it seemed unlikely the guitarist had heard, what with the volume hovering around the pain threshold. But he suddenly veered into a killer impersonation of himself 40 years ago. In lieu of an encore, a roadie gave away bucket-loads of plectrums, and one thought of crates of the things being loaded onto a plane at the beginning of the tour. Still, it felt good to have seen Buddy Guy, and only partly because it meant you wouldn't have to see him again.

After a poor turn-out in 2001, due to foot-and-mouth disease, this, the 19th Brecon Jazz Festival, was an important year for the event. Cancellations by Ornette Coleman, Ray Barretto and – at the last minute, due to illness – Ruby Braff, provided the worst of starts, but the festival managed to redeem itself with many memorable performances in a range of genres.

David Murray, who played the Market Hall on Saturday afternoon with his quartet, served reminders of why he remains the most exciting saxophonist going, and why British promoters need to book him with his own band. Soloing tumultuously against the headlong pulse of an excellent rhythm section, featuring the hot young pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, Murray showed he has refined his customary method to a rare art, using vocalised slurs and slides to work the gaps between the well-tempered scale, while still swinging like the clappers.

Solo piano concerts by Marilyn Crispell and Uri Caine at Theatr Brycheiniog provided further highlights, the former through a delicate lyricism that seemed to match the cosmic density of Coltrane-era McCoy Tyner (who himself played a trio concert at the Market Hall) with the examples of both Cecil Taylor and Chopin. For his part, Caine turned in a bravura show, calling upon stride and boogie-woogie, Jewish folk themes, "Round Midnight", Mahler's "Adagietto" and Lennon-McCartney's "Blackbird".

Towards the festival's close on Sunday evening, the Mingus Big Band showed that, while it may have lost some of its star members (and probably to more lucrative summer gigs), the strength of the ensemble remains undiminished. The band even managed to play that incredibly difficult and rarely performed Mingus classic, "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers", despatching it with a musical accuracy that's not always associated with the festival circuit.