After some minutes of impassioned classical playing Ernst Reijseger, the Dutch cellist, began walking around Bath's Guildhall recital room, combining the exquisite sonorities of the melody with the sound of his cello spike dragging on the floorboards. He then serenaded several female members of the audience, pretended to sweep up the room (wielding the cello like a broom) and levered himself back on stage by lying on his back, still playing.

It was part classical recital, part free improvisation, part blues guitar solo (Reijseger sometimes plays the cello on his lap) and part circus act. What's more, it was a typical rebuttal of the soberly titled Clerical Medical Jazz Weekend - an unlikely label for a free-fire zone exploding amid the tranquil days of Bath's classical music festival.

Like many of the artists at this unique event in the British jazz calendar, Reijseger is hard to categorise except by his consistent rejection of categories. He was one of several classically inspired string players at Sunday's performances. French violinist Dominique Pifarely played a recital almost entirely in his intricate and somewhat melancholic straight-music manner, rather than his jazz-swing style, but the precision and clarity he and pianist Francois Couturier brought to their performance was illuminating.

Close on Reijseger's heels for transformation of an instrument's traditional identity was French bassist Renaud Garcia-Fons - one of the most remarkable tamers of the contrabass.

With a fellow bassist, accordion and percussion, he extemporised on a variety of pieces with a distinctly French and northern Spanish flavour and won an ovation as ecstatic as the Guildhall's for Reijseger later on.

Reijseger reappeared with saxophonist Andy Sheppard for the finale: a festival commission re-examining Cole Porter in a new music context of double-percussion (Paul Clarvis and Alan Purves), cello and sax. Both Sheppard and Reijseger are old hands at preserving the flair and romance of good Broadway material, while also ripping received wisdom about it to shreds, but the event could have used a little more prior thought.

Flashes from all the players fitfully lit up the Pavilion - but, for the second year running, it was an example of a formally commissioned flagship piece of the weekend rather underselling both its stature and the much deserved reputations of its performers.