The fight through teeming crowds to get to Herbie Hancock's Royal Festival Hall show suggested that the 2010 London jazz festival was breaking all records – until I pondered whether the Lord Mayor's South Bank fireworks might have a bearing on it. Just the same, the improbably 70-year-old Hancock unleashed his own fireworks in a two-and-a-half-hour single set on Saturday.
Hancock brought a sextet to cover a world-pop repertoire that had been created on his Imagine Project album by dozens of musicians in several countries. But his violinist-vocalist Kristina Train, soul singer and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, and guitarist Lionel Loueke generally made a better and jazzier job of this radio-friendly material than the more illustrious performers did on the record. By unleashing some blazing piano improvisations, the maestro also rammed home the idea that he wouldn't surrender his relish for cliff-hanging surprises, either – and he casually slid in timeless hits such as Watermelon Man and Cantaloupe Island, as well.
Hancock's first improvisation swelled from a choppy electric piano intro to a tumultuous exchange with drummer Trevor Lawrence Jr, the second was mischievously slipped between a lyrical, synth-aided account of 'Round Midnight for Loueke's guitar and a medley of The Times They Are a-Changin' and Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come; Train lent a whimsical, country-inflected ambiguity to the first, and Phillinganes a sermonising incandescence to the latter.
The previous night at the Barbican, Guy Barker arranged and directed operations for nine very different singers – from the 16-year-old rising star Nikki Yanofsky to the 67-year-old Georgie Fame – for the festival-fanfare Jazz Voice. Surprise guest Paloma Faith, a gifted reinventer of classic torch-songs, was the most theatrically charismatic presence of the night, the subtle, focused and flawlessly musical Gretchen Parlato the most original, and Noel McKoy, China Moses and expat American Charlie Wood the most convincing soul singers.
Fame's bebop soliloquy on Everything Happens to Me, and an Alan Barnes tour de force on Artie Shaw's 1940 clarinet concerto made the buffs whoop, but Barker's bespoke band played with their usual assurance, even if Motown soul grooves still slightly fox them. A late-night live radio broadcast from Ronnie Scott's also featured Gretchen Parlato, but was dominated by the breathtaking rhythmic hipness of saxophonist Chris Potter's band, and the solo-sax acrobatics of Colin Stetson, who managed to make abrasive free-improv effects and warped pop-song melodies meet.
Jazz Voice is on Performance on 3 at 7pm on 15 November. Jazz on 3 from Ronnie Scott's is at bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vrbbw.