Two hugely contrasting gigs in as many days – contrasting in so many ways but both with a great deal to recommend them.

On Tuesday, 24 November, a singer who has shifted an exceptional number of CDs and can fill a large auditorium but still continues to, in her own inimitable way, confound showbiz expectations.

The jazz fraternity can be sniffy about singers, especially ones who are on the margins of jazz and, to use the jargon, “shift units”. They should make an exception for Madeleine Peyroux; she is the real thing. She has paid her dues on the streets of Paris, has the uncanny knack of sounding about 70 years old and as if she has stepped out of a past jazz/blues era, and maintains very high standards, both for herself and her musicians.

And on her latest album, Bare Bones on the Universal label, she has moved in a subtly new direction and devoted the whole album to original songs.

She is a quietly compelling live performer and rarely have I heard anyone lay back so far behind the beat without getting lost. Not sure who is in her touring band but last time out Jon Herrington, who also tours with Steely Dan, was on guitar.

She is in the newly refurbished Butterworth Hall at the Warwick Arts Centre from 8pm. Tickets are £25 and £22.50 from www.warwickartscentre.co.uk

On Wednesday, 25 November, a young band that has probably shifted an unexceptional number of its first CD, but which deserves to sell vast quantities because it really is that good. Zed-U is bassist Neil Charles, clarinettist Shabaka Hutchings and drummer Tom Skinner.

The band’s album, Night Time On The Middle Passage, on the Babel label, reveals a most original sounding trio, combining some boisterous, freeish jazz with electronics and North African-influenced trance-blues.

It’s very impressive stuff, combining power with great subtlety, and Hutchings, especially, is electrifying live. Oh, and for this date Seb Rochford replaces Tome Skinner on drums.

No large and newly refurbished concert hall for Zed-U; they are at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth from 9pm. This is a Jazz Club session, from Birmingham Jazz, and entrance is just £4 on the door.

And maybe one day Zed-U will be filling the Butterworth – we can dream! More at www.birminghamjazz.co.uk

Before both of those is a not-really-jazz gig that should be an absolute joy. The Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is at Symphony Hall on Sunday,  22 November, with just a piano and his gorgeous tunes.

If he plays Amore, the opening track from his new Decca disc, Playing The Piano, that will be enough. You might remember the song from his best-selling album Beauty (and including the Arto Lindsay lyrics: “Good morning, good evening where are you?”). The solo piano version is heaven distilled into a few minutes.

There aren’t many tickets left, but just being in the same hall as the man should be enough. Go to www.thsh.co.uk

Wayne Escoffery: Uptown (Posi-Tone Records)
He has become indelibly associated with the New York scene, but in fact tenor player Wayne Escoffery was born here in London, though he was still a child when his mother took him to the States. He is an in-demand side and session man, and is now a regular with the various Mingus bands that work out of the Jazz Standard in midtown New York.

Uptown has him leading a quartet with Avi Rothbard on guitar, Gary Versace on organ and Jason Brown on drums. While we’re used to hearing Escoffery on original material – and there is plenty here, both from his pen and that of Rothbard – but more of a novelty is hearing him get stuck into a standard like Ellington’s I Got It Bad. He has something of Sonny Rollins’ or Dexter Gordon’s directness of attack and confident, melodic improvising, while the band grooves hard behind him.

Escoffery has a particularly personal and indentifiable way of playing patterns on faster originals – reminiscent of a player like Chris Potter, though by no means an imitator. It means some of his soloing can feel a little predictable, expert though it is.

Rothbard has a fairly straight jazz guitar sound but is fleet of finger and fluent in ideas. Versace and Brown swing hard in support.

Matthew Halsall: Colour Yes (Gondwana Records)
Trumpeter Matthew Halsall is based in Manchester, apparently, and is a name completely new to me. His group comprises Nat Birchall on saxophone, Adam Fairhall on piano, Gavin Barras on bass with Gaz Hughes and Marek Dorcik sharing the drum duties.

They play fairly simple, fairly timeless, fairly pretty modal jazz that, in the old way, is more concerned with achieving and maintaining the right mood rather than showing off their instrumental skills. That is good and a pleasant change from much of what happens in jazz these days. It is also not a band overly interested in matching indie rock bands for street cred, noise and intensity. That, too, is a welcome change.

However, in order to really make your mark with music that is, on the surface, this stripped back and simple, you have to be more than a nice bunch of guys. I am not sure that Matthew and crew quite achieve this.

The introduction of harp (Rachael Gladwin) on three tracks is a nice touch and does provide a vague link to the work of Alice Coltrane and the meditational jazz style she explored. Birchall sounds firmer on tenor, and is happy to take his time developing a solo, and Halsall has a good direct, open sound and, again, is not afraid to let his solos slowly unfurl.

In the end though, it’s just not quite memorable enough. Full marks for bucking the trend and going their own way, though.

Tonight’s Jam House jazz gig is a great chance to hear the Birmingham Conservatoire musicians en masse. It’s called the Jazz Composers Ensemble, rather than the Conservatoire Big Band, but it’s possibly a smaller version of the same thing.

Pianist/composer James Rhead-Wilson is at the helm, and the combined forces of a lot of brass, enthusiasm and sparky arrangements will be just the thing to liven up an autumnal Tuesday evening. Original tunes too. It’s free and the music starts at 9.30pm. Presented by Birmingham Jazz.

Jim Hart’s Gemini: Narrada (Loop Records LOOP1010)
This is a persuasive disc if you give it time to persuade you. When it starts out, it is clear that the playing is most accomplished and the writing strong but it feels that as a composer Jim Hart might have fallen, like so many of his contemporaries, under the spell of the music/mathematics masters like Steve Coleman. Certainly Four Little Words has that “funk for the head” kind of mental appeal, and it does throw the unsuspecting listener in at the deep end.

But, let’s get back to the beginning. Gemini is Hart on vibes, Ivo Neame on alto saxophone, Jasper Hoiby on bass and Dave Smith on drums – all four players are strong giving the band  a fine balance, with Hart’s vibes tone and Neame’s relatively rich alto sound stopping things getting too harsh, and Hoiby giving a powerful bottom end. Smith is pushy when he needs to be but is always very musical with it.

Dark Moon starts with loads of atmospheric stuff from Smith and Hart coming in on marimba, before we are headlong into mind games once more, with Neame and Hart in parallel.

It’s when we reach the long title track that the heart makes an entrance to complement the head. Narrada is a place on Bodmin moor where Hart grew up, and this more elemental, lyrical music begins to leaven my initial wariness that this might just be clever-clogs music. Nifty, funky tune taken in harmony by sax and vibes, followed by expressive and finely formed solos from Neame and Hart. Then Bodmin is inexplicably annexed to Cuba at the end!

Other stand-out tracks are the thoughtful Kindred, the driving Crunchy Country and the elegaic Last of the Leaves, which sounds a bit like it was written by Django Bates and J.S. Bach in tandem – not bad role models for a young composer, I’d say.

A really fine record from a group currently touring to support it and are in Nottingham at the Bonnington Theatre on Thursday, Derby at the Eden Gardens on Friday and in Birmingham at the Yardbird on Thursday 26 November.

Each week photographer Russ Escritt sends me his favourite picture of the week, or perhaps one from his extensive archive. Here’s one from the archive – the Jazzcotech Dancers from a gig with the Dave O’Higgins Sextet at the Glee Club in Birmingham on 2 October 2002.

Russ has been shooting (in the nicest possible way) local and visiting jazz musicians for a good few years now. In fact, he has recently compiled a book of the ones he likes best. Here is the cover:

You can order a copy here, or if you want to check out more of Russ Escrit’s superb pictures, go here.

Rickie Lee Jones: Balm In Gilead (Fantasy 0888072317604)
A little break from jazz proper for some compatible folk-rock-country with swing overtones, and guest slots from Bill Frisell as well as Nashville types like Vic Chesnutt and Alison Kraus, and Ben Harper.

This is perhaps a more conventional album stylistically from Rickie Lee but a more consistent and comfortable set of songs than some of her other releases over recent years.

There’s some lazy swinging stuff in the Peyroux vein courtesy of The Moon Is Made Of Gold, written by Rickie Lee’s father, some slow, measured spiritual music in His Jeweled Floor, some pretty straight Nashville in Remember Me and some of the that Muscle Shoals-tinged R&B in Wild Girl.

The Blue Ghazel is an instrumental with some honking baritone saxophone, and the closer, Bayless St, could be a Celtic classic folk song were it not another Jones original.

Sonny Rollins: Moving Out (Prestige 0888072315945)
Sonny in 1954 with Kenny Doreham on trumpet, Elmo Hope on piano, Percy Heath on bass and Art Blakey on drums. This is still bebop inspired music, and swift from the start with the title track, even swifter to follow with Swingin’ For Bumsy. The whole band is cooking, especially Dorham and Hope in their solos, and drum connoisseurs will notice something strange about Blakey’s sound. Where’s teh hi-hat? Apparently due to some “technical issue” – did he leave it in the cab on the way to the session? – Art is sans certain cymbals.

The band calms for the ballad, Silk ‘n’ Satin, with Rollins in imperious form, luxuriating in the lower tones of the tenor from the start. Nice solo again from Hope and there are some lovely distant, echoey trumpet lines behind the saxophone on its re-entry, and it is over all too quickly.

Solid is a regular blues and a good-time thing.

Then, for the final track on this RVG remastered disc, we switch bands and with Sonny for a nearly 11-minute meander through More Than You Know are Thelonious Monk on piano, Tommy Potter on bass and Arthur Taylor on drums. It’s a great tune, Sonny’s tongued phrasing on the melody is thick and his tone lush, and Monk plays it just as you’d expect, rich, crunchy chords pushing those off-off beats. Worth the price for this track alone.

Various: Gilles Peterson presents Havana Cultura (Brownswood Recordings BWOOD038CD)
DJ Gilles Peterson has the very useful skill of making things very cool and hip just be giving them his attention. It’s a skill that he shares with John Peel and, before he went off the rails, Andy Kershaw. And Peterson is very much in tune with his times, which is why he has the trust of both the fans of his radio programmes and DJ appearances, and of the musicians he records.

So, all this stuff that is going on in Cuba was there before he visited – and some of it we already know about, like the rapper Kumar and the young singer Yusa, as well as musical director and pianist Roberto Fonseca – was already happening before he arrived, and is still happening after he has come home. But now we know more about it, and so the artists featured here, known or unknown, are likely to have enhanced musical careers.

Choosing Fonseca to help mastermind this project is a brilliant stroke. The man is fully steeped in the jazz heritage of the country but also understands the broader street styles. The first disc of this two-disc set comprises a kind of new Buena Vista Social Club format, with Fonseca (he has also contributed to the Buena Vista project) leading the band and loads of special guests. The band includes virtuoso percussionist and veteran of the great Cuban jazz band Irakere, Yaroldy Abreu, fellow Irakerean Javier Zalba on saxophone and flute, and Sierra Maestra trumpeter Yelfris Valdes. Oh, and the music is recorded in the fabled Egrem studios in Havana.

CD02 gives a whirlwind tour around the street music of young Cuba, courtesy of  already recorded tracks by groups like Free Hole Negro and Los Aldeanos, and artists like Danay and Francis de Rio, all chosen by Peterson. Listen out for a need incorporation of Caravan into Wichy de Vedado’s La Perla del Son, and Los Aldeanos’ Pasa El Borrador which includes a kind of chipmunk Amy Winehouse Back To Black sample.

The packaging is pretty, there is a good booklet and there is lots more background at  www.havana-cultura.com

Outhouse: Ruhabi (Loop Records LOOP 1009)
The coming together of the London jazz quartet and the five Sabar drummers from The Gambia is best experienced live, I think, but then you could say that of most jazz. On disc it still has a lot to recommend it, though, especially if you haven’t had the chance to see and hear the band in the flesh.

The opener, Mam Bamba, is very much a piece of two halves (although unlike football games both show strong play) – the drummers first setting out their stall, then the jazz band theirs. Having understood the constituent elements, we can then get really into the way they mix on track two: Duck Dance (Leumbeul). In some ways, while Outhouse’s bass and drums team of Johnny Brierly and Dave Smith can get in amongst the Sabar drummers, the saxophonists, Robin Fincker and Mark Hanslip, need to tread more carefully or else it gets far too chaotic, and so they do with some cryptic little melodic phrases in harmony half way through.

Other highlights are the interweaving of vocal and saxophone lines against an infectious riff and rhythm on Bara Mbaye, and the title track which again features an infectious bass sequence and a lovely interlocking of sax and drum phrases.

In fact the strength of this disc is, ironically, that the two groups don’t try to all play at the same time all that often, choosing to act as contrasting/complimenting textures and moods. What is clear is the vibe that each group takes from the other and uses to enhance their own music. A fruitful collaboration, in other words, without ever being a forced one.