First up on the rising stars roster at the Cheltenham festival was British pianist Liam Noble. The economy and spiky thoughtfulness of Noble's piano-playing is often close to Thelonious Monk, Andrew Hill and occasionally Abdullah Ibrahim in spirit rather than mimicry. But, although Noble's classy quintet kept faith with his intentions, it was the harmonic intrigue of The Bathroom Mirror, the twisting melody and Celtic echoes of Across the Park and the Mike Gibbs-like horn harmonies of a closing almost-blues that made Noble's wry, pungent writing the star.

Pianist Robert Mitchell's fascinating classical rewrites of funk, with their choppy percussion, stately chamber-soul vocals, jazzy virtuosity and determination to build an accessible contemporary music confirmed his group Panacea's impact on UK jazz this year - and the phenomenal Cuban violinist Omar Puente guested again.

American sax innovator Tim Berne's Hard Cell then implacably delivered its terse and brittle Ornette Coleman-related music, driven by the astonishing polyrhythmic drumming of Tom Rainey, a phenomenon that messes with your head and your feet. A rare appearance by John Surman's quartet then turned into a highlight of the day, featuring inventive pianist John Taylor, bassist Chris Laurence and drummer John Marshall. Multi reed-player Surman engagingly mixed the folksy and the boisterous, but Taylor and the trio's long, spontaneous odyssey - inadvertently and exhilaratingly conflating the show's next two tunes into one - clearly stunned not only the crowd, but the leader as well.

And saxophone jazz of a more meticulously organised and cooler ingenuity came later in the evening from the quartet led by one of the New York downtown scene's subtlest operators: Marty Erlich. The writing for a two-sax front line was beautifully harmonised, and the effect was often like a Lee Konitz and early Ornette Coleman band combined.

Ends tonight. Box office: 01242 227979.