Three days into the Jazz Festival�s 30th anniversary year, and Australian �trumpeter Bob Barnard and Edinburgh�s own Swing 2008 gave a performance that conjured up the �spirits of festivals past, when informal �musical encounters �dominated the programme.

Star rating: ****

Three days into the Jazz Festival's 30th anniversary year, and Australian trumpeter Bob Barnard and Edinburgh's own Swing 2008 gave a performance that conjured up the spirits of festivals past, when informal musical encounters dominated the programme. Usually these pairings worked out, but sometimes they didn't - which added a frisson of tension to the whole affair. (And in the case of certain flammable personalities, it made for a quite nerve-wracking concert, for the audience as well as the musicians.) Thankfully, and as expected, Barnard, a veteran visitor to Edinburgh, slotted in to the annual Swing jamboree perfectly, and the Scottish musicians' delight in both his playing and his vast repertoire was evident. Guest stars can often limit the options tune-wise, but Barnard's enthusiasm and knowledge fused with this superb band's, and the Hub crowd was treated to such rarely played delights as the French pop tune C'est Si Bon, Django Reinhardt's Swing '42, the Irving Berlin song Steppin' Out with My Baby (famously performed by Fred Astaire in Easter Parade as he dances in slow motion) and, in tribute to the Brazilian-style weather, two balmy bossa novas, Black Orpheus and One Note Samba.

Although Barnard plays with a breezy elegance, he is also an extraordinarily authoritative trumpeter with a burnished, mellow tone and a super-tasteful, unfussy style. In Swing 2008, his "crumpet" (he describes his horn as a cross between a cornet and a trumpet) found the perfect front-line partner in multi-instrumentalist Dick Lee, and ideal laid-back accompaniment from John Russell and Lachlan McColl on guitars and Roy Percy on bass