Edinburgh Jazz Festival: Edinburgh Jazz Festival appeared, in Friday�s opening concert, to have picked up the baton from Chic�s visit to the capital the previous weekend. Because just as Nile Rodgers and Co ended with Good Times, the music here presented that same feelgood message.

Roy Hargrove Quintet, Queen's Hall
Star rating: ****

EDINBURGH Jazz Festival appeared, in Friday's opening concert, to have picked up the baton from Chic's visit to the capital the previous weekend. Because just as Nile Rodgers and Co ended with Good Times, the music here presented that same feelgood message.

Edinburgh's own Brian Kellock kicked off with a piano trio set boasting sparkling, witty invention, charging bluesy energy and a contender for the tenderest interpretation ever conceived of When You're Smiling. With its acknowledgements to Clifford Brown, Horace Silver and Milt Jackson, as well as Irving Berlin, through a ragtime reading of Putting on the Ritz, this was a splendid precursor to trumpeter Roy Hargrove's group.

Hargrove's belief that what goes in through musicians' ears comes out through their instruments is lent credence by his band distilling soul music from Sam Cooke's gospel leanings to Philly grooves and hip hop into a by turns tough then sweetly eloquent continuation of the hard-bop tradition.

Singer Roberta Gambarini's guest spot, good though she is, rather interrupted the flow from beautifully composed, hymn-like chorales through pianist Jonathan Batiste's beguiling mischief and Hargrove's drop-dead gorgeous flugel horn interludes and changed the direction towards livewire, exciting Cubanarama and the New Orleans-flavoured Bring it on Home to Me.

There's a richness that you can almost taste in all of this and the sense of occasion was completed by the group's gradual departure during the encore that left the kilted Batiste appropriately taking the final bow on a new tune whose buoyant bass figure bore a resemblance to Mairi's Wedding.

Makoto Ozone & No Name Horses/Enrico Pieranunzi Trio/Doky, Johansen, Ozone & Smith, The hub
Star rating: ****

THE two extremes of preparation conspired to produce two concerts with broadly similar results at the Hub on Saturday. Both concerts featured the brilliant Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone, making a welcome return to Edinburgh, where he last appeared with his American-based trio.

Since then and after some 20 years in the US, Ozone has returned to Tokyo, where he has focused attention on one of the many musical languages in which he's fluent: latin jazz. A Japanese big band playing bossa nova and samba may tempt thoughts concerning authenticity, but Ozone's No Name Horses push any doubts firmly aside. Superbly well rehearsed and with individual flair and passion allied to a collective attention to detail, they gave a breathtaking performance.

All the music comes from within the band, with lead trumpeter Eric Miyashiro contributing what Ozone self-deprecatingly referred to as a "flash piano concerto" that turned out to be a masterclass in orchestral dynamics with a startling piano solo. Ozone's own Cave Walk featured great use of flutes and mutes, and if the gentle Oasis underlined the pianist's sensitive bossa touch, the aptly named No Siesta gave the orchestra's sole non-Japanese member, Pernell Saturnino, a shop window for his multiple latin percussion talents.

Straight from this triumph, Ozone went off to rehearse with a quartet whose appearance on stage later made a mockery of the fact that they'd only just got together, and in some cases only just met. Playing music that reflected their Scandinavian, Scottish and New York links, bassist Chris Minh Doky, drummer Jonas Johansen, saxophonist Tommy Smith and Ozone grooved, reflected and surged with collective purpose. Doky's nimble physicality, Johansen's blend of energy and musicality, Smith's rugged melodiousness and Ozone's depth of expression made for a great group sound, nowhere more so than on Ozone's hushed, hymn-like Where Do We Go From Here? Answer: the nearest recording facility, with any luck.

In between times, Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi introduced a poetic improvisatory sense in a trio set that occasionally strayed towards blandness but lit up with bluesy insight on Billy Strayhorn's A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing, and produced a magical, unscheduled segue between his own From E to C and Cole Porter's I Love You in tribute to his long-time colleague, Chet Baker.