When you’ve been waiting 13 years to get a musician on the programme, another 10 minutes won’t hurt, especially when they’re taken up with a tribute to reeds player Sam Rivers, a musician whom Coleman was hugely influenced by, who sadly died on Boxing Day.

Then it’s into the gig, and Coleman’s trademark terse, deeply rhythmic ideas. He’s a master at weaving elaborate melodies from the smallest cells, and of somehow giving his music a sense of groove despite its intense complexity. You’d feel sorry for his young bandmates, pianist David Virelles and drummer Marcus Gilmore, if they didn’t rise to this steep challenge so well. Gilmore is especially impressive in the first set, giving an African feel in the first piece before getting ultra-fast and hip in Reflex.

So what makes Steve Coleman tick? We’ll find out in the interval as he joins Kevin Le Gendre in conversation in front of an audience at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – among those on the menu are Dave Holland and Von Freeman, and Coleman’s take on rhythm in basketball.

Steve Coleman talks to Kevin Le Gendre

Back on stage, the second part of the performance starts in circumspect fashion, gently pushed along by Virelles who, for large parts of the gig, performs almost more as a bass player than a pianist. The night finishes with a track that has the air of a Coleman classic – this gig is well worth waiting for.

The Jazz on 3 team.

The drama was inspired by workshops and conversations with the many different communities in modern Salford, as  well as academics. Anjum was fascinated by the extraordinary story of Surrounded by the Enemy, a real life Native American whose body is believed to be still buried under Salford streets. This new play explores how we relate to death and the impact of change on communities.

Alison’s PhD in death ritual around the world is not going well. Despite misgivings and her poor relationship with her Nan, she returns home to Salford, hoping that a job with a local funeral firm will help her unlock the secrets around her mother’s death and complete her doctorate. She is alarmed when a strange man starts to follow her, begging her to help him, then disappearing as quickly as he appeared. She struggles with her new job, her Nan and finally collapses under the pressure of it all. Only then does she find out the truth – that the man who dogged her footsteps is in fact the spirit of a 19th-century Native American, who came to Salford with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Circus and died there, his body mysteriously disappearing for ever. She must help him get his bones back to his homeland in order to release his spirit and in so doing, help her get her own life on track.

Listen to The Lost Salford Sioux on BBC Radio 3, 90 -92 FM at 8.30pm on  Sunday January 15th 2012

Sing Up - Singers from the Gemini and Salford Community Choirs

This production would not have been possible without the input and advice of many many people in Salford and beyond. Particular thanks go to:

Kate Chatfield, Exhibitions Manager, People’s History Museum

Dr Julie-Marie Strange, Senior Lecturer, History, School of Art, Manchester University

Stephen Terence Welsh, Curator of Living Cultures, Manchester Museum

David Collingwood, Operations Director, The Co-operative Funeral Care

Tony Molyneaux and Andy Waters, Funeral Directors, The Co-operative Funeral Care

Councillor Steve Coen

Dr Karen Jones, Senior Lecturer in American History, University of Kent

Dr Julie Anderson, Senior Lecturer History of Modern Science

Dr Dan Bailey

Gemini Group

Commander Kevin Mullingham, Salford Police

Paul Divine, Salford Police Coroner

PC Nigel Keane

Rabbi Brodie

Cannon David Wyatt

Jason Wingard and Gino Evans

David Smith Boaz Trust

Mark Cunningham, FJS

Anna Turner, Revive

Rhetta and Sophie, Rapar

Waqas Anees, Eccles Neighbourhood Development officer

Gail Skelly, Ordsall Arts

Broughton Trust

Janelle, Liberty House

Swinton Youth Arts

Ian Hepplewhite

John Surridge

Natalie Stables, EMTAS

Sherry Ashworth, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Writing School, Manchester Metropolitan University

Marnie Stanton Riches, Author

Tony Flynn, Salford Online

Mike Poloway

Berni Tomlinson

L. Bennet Thornton

Michael Powel

The singers from the Gemini and Salford Community Choirs

Paul Trimble, Assistant Head of Salford Music and Performing Arts Service

Kathleen Hesford.

Getting the grooves going, and representing the eclectic London scene, tuba pioneer Oren Marshall and his Charming Transport Band. The sounds of Ghana, Afrobeat, funk and jazz were all thrown into an irresistible melting-pot by this 8-piece band of British and African musicians.

Next up, a collector’s item: the first live appearance on Jazz on 3 by US saxophonist Steve Coleman, one of the most influential musicians of the last 20 years. Along with his Reflex Trio, he hotfooted it over to Ronnie’s from another gig, so were warmed up and raring to go!

How else to follow that but with French prog-rock-jazz-fusion?! Guillaume Perret and Electric Epic may not be a band you’re familiar with yet, but they definitely left their mark on this show – this is where things got heavy.

Jez with Gregory Porter

To finish, Gregory Porter, an American singer whose star is emphatically on the rise, with a recent Grammy nomination and critics’ praise ringing in his ears. As the lights burned low, his soulful late-night set of standards was the perfect way to end a really special evening.

The Jazz on 3 team.

The set that he and his trio recorded for us reflects the latest step in a musical career that has been something of an odyssey. And Law’s classical upbringing in particular still has a big part to play, as you’ll hear from his pre-session interview with John Fordham, who stands in for Jez this week. The gently insistent lyricism of the opener shows off the highly attuned, stripped-back chamber-music approach that the trio has developed through 5 years playing together.

John Law at Livingston Studios

But this set also points in a new direction – there’s a grooviness and an edge to the second tune, Triadic Ballet, from its dark, buzzing opening to the suppressed Latin feel that later emerges. And to close, there’s a deliberate nod to Swedish trio EST in which Law, along with bassist Yuri Goloubev and drummer Asaf Sirkis, start with their signature deftness of touch before a heavier romp to finish.

Finally on the programme, we pay tribute to British composer, bandleader and educator Graham Collier, who died recently.

The Jazz on 3 team

‘Terrorist bebop’, that’s how quartet Mostly Other People Do The Killing style themselves, rummaging through jazz history, gloriously holding favourite tunes and riffs aloft before wryly tossing them aside. It’s a bit like putting a Real Book through the washing machine.

The group is nominally led by bassist Moppa Elliott, whose compositions they subvert and take in wildly different directions at will. One of NYC’s hottest trumpet players Peter Evans presents a fearsome front-line, playing the anarchist one moment and flexing his bop chops the next, while Jon Irabagon is less virtuosic but just as irreverent on sax. Elliott prompts and prods, either keeping his riff while all about him lose theirs, or mischievously changing the time – a trait shared by hyperactive drummer Kevin Shea.

Mostly Other People Do The Killing's Kevin Shea (copyright Fabio Lugaro flickr.com/photos/fabiolug)

In the interval, we serve up more trumpet for you, as we commemorate the 40^th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s death by asking Evans and a selection of other players what influence Armstrong the trumpet player still has on their craft. So it’s a programme in which past and present collide, with often explosive results.

This is no candle-lit rendez-vous, but the music produced plenty of heat and light. Wallen and Lehman start by establishing what they have in common – a huge admiration for pianist Andrew Hill – and a tune of his gets the set off and running. What’s fascinating about these one-off sessions is listening to musicians exploring music together for the first time. The trio has a fluent group dynamic already, weaving intricately in and around Lehman’s angular groove music. Add Wallen though and things get stirred up – listen to the way the rhythm section responds to the start of his solo on Pure Imagination. The fact that there’s nowhere to hide in this music makes Wallen’s bold approach to this potentially dangerous liaison all the more impressive.

Byron Wallen in the Somethin' Else studios

Our interval feature this week focuses on another American visiting the UK – Keith Jarrett, who’s playing with his Standards trio in London next week. We can’t bring you the gig but it’s a great chance to run the rule over the Jarrett back catalogue and consider where he might go next – writer Geoff Dyer does just that.

To round off the programme we’ve got the rest of Paradoxical Frog’s performance at the Vision Festival, the first part of which we brought to you a few weeks ago. It’s another trio-plus-guest set-up, but the group’s fragmentary, semi-free approach provides quite a contrast to our opening set.

The Overtone Quartet

Actually though, the group does look pretty good on paper, with rising stars Jason Moran (piano and Rhodes) and drummer Eric Harland joining saxophone royalty Chris Potter and FLY/Brad Mehldau bassist Larry Grenadier, stepping in for Holland for this gig. But it’s the feel of the band as a whole and the strength of the writing – from all four corners – that stand out. From the abstract probings at the top of the first set, they quickly move up through the gears into muscular, grooving interplay, led by Potter’s bravado and with sparks constantly flying from Harland’s kit. In the second set, listen out for Grenadier’s drive even when the volume’s turned down, and Moran’s colourful Rhodes playing.

In the interval, Moran talks to our man in New York, critic Nate Chinen, about the music that has helped shape his sound. This includes a surprise piano ‘legend’ that we’d never heard of, and who was certainly never going to feature in the new Smithsonian Anthology of Jazz, which Nate and Radio 3’s Alyn Shipton chew over at the end of the programme.

And we start the show by paying tribute to another unorthodox musician – the renegade ‘bluesologist’ Gil Scott-Heron, who passed away last week.

Revolution on your radio (if not your television), Monday 6 June at 11pm on Jazz on 3.

The Jazz on 3 team

Jamie Cullum’s thoughts on the music that he, Radio 1′s Gilles Peterson and Jez discovered as they listened to the BBC Introducing tracks sent in this year by unsigned and under-the-radar UK jazz acts. Well, you can be the judge this week as we present our pick of the bands recorded in the sunny Sunday afternoon surroundings of the outdoor stage at this year’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

The event kicked off with Trish Clowes’ Tangent – Jamie Cullum’s favourite – a distinctive young saxophonist with a rhythm section some may recognise from Kit Downes’ Mercury-nominated trio. Next up was the glitchy, electronic beats of south London’s Saltwater Samurai, whose EP has already featured on Gilles Peterson’s Radio 1 show. From here the music got harder and deeper! Rachel Musson’s Skein (meaning a flock of geese in flight) presented her highly original compositions, backed up by a band featuring not one but two awesome drummers. The Edinburgh-based Discordian Trio ensured the show went out with a bang, storming the stage with a driving mix of visceral electric bass and guitar unison lines. Their energy was particularly impressive given that the group’s day had begun at 6am, southbound on the M1.

Judging from these BBC Introducing gigs, the immediate future of he British jazz scene looks to be in safe hands.

Oh and by the way – Jazz On 3 has just won the Gold award for best specialist music show at the Sony Awards. It’s a real honour so thanks to everyone who has ever worked on the show and also to you for listening!

Saltwater Samurai

There’s no two ways about it: this week’s programme is a real guitar-fest. We’ve got a gig based on a chance encounter between long-lost friends, seven-string wizardry, and even a bona fide Joe Satriani connection. But if you’re not a guitar hero, don’t worry – our two live sets are, above all, great jazz from two duos with very different musical approaches.

It’s Charlie Hunter’s ability to juggle bass and melody, on custom-made 7- and 8-string instruments, that’s been dazzling audiences over the years, with tonight’s drummer Scott Amendola often in tow. But Hunter is a musician first, technician second, and as he explains beforehand, it’s the soul and simplicity of old blues tunes that really gets him going – something that definitely comes across in performance. Before meeting Hunter, Jez dug out a live recording from 1992 that I remembered he was on, with The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy – a totally different kettle of fish. It’s interesting to think that he was yet to emerge as the prolific jazz recording artist he is

Charlie Hunter at the Vortex, London on 5 April 2011

these days.

You have to delve even further back into jazz history for the last time John McLaughlin and Billy Cobham played together, in one of the 1980s editions of jazz-fusion pioneers the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The last time, that is, until July 2010 at the Montreux Jazz Festival. You can hear the unlikely story of their reunion on the programme, along with the highlights from this heaviest of jam sessions.

Also on the show, we preview the second of our four BBC Introducing bands, who we’ll be recording at the Cheltenham Festival at the start of May. This week, you’ll get a taste of the Edinburgh-based Discordian Trio, appropriately influenced by the Mahavishnu Orchestra in their fusion-meets-free-jazz sound. And, of course, led by a guitarist.

Last November Louis celebrated his 70^th birthday with a special concert at the Purcell Room in London – and you can hear it on tonight’s programme. Split into two halves, the night began with an intimate duo between old friends as Louis and pianist Keith Tippett took to the stage. In a set of high energy improv the pair showcased an expansive understanding of each other’s playing developed over their 40-year musical relationship.

In the break between sets you can hear an interview Jez recorded with Louis in front of a live audience at the Southbank Centre. Covering the pivotal points in Louis’ career he talks candidly about his experiences under apartheid and as the last-standing member of a generation of exiled musicians that have made such an impact on the jazz scene here in England.

The second half of the concert begins shortly after midnight and features a group put together specifically for the event called Seven for 70, performing a range of songs and compositions from Louis’ back-catalogue including Creole ballads and  wild swinging tunes. Joining Louis on stage are Ntshuks Bonga & Jason Yarde on saxophone, Francine Luce on vocals, trumpeter Henry Lowther, John Edwards on bass and pianist Alex Hawkins . It’s a 70^th birthday party to remember for a man whose life and work deserves to be celebrated.