Brubeck

Three piano-bass-drums trios were about two too many; all four of the evening's pianists seemed to be touched by the long arms (left and right) of Mr Brubeck, although Dave Fraser was the least obvious.

Nicky Smith tends to depend on a few stock gimmicks; the jamming right hand got on my nerves after a while.

The Giants of Jazz—self-styled—provided some honest Dixie of the mouldy fig variety. Incidentally, I wish people would stop trying to pigeonhole jazz in fine-sounding categories. The use of the rather spurious term "Mainstream", strikes me as both pretentious and inaccurate, especially to describe this sort of modified Acker Bilk.