This year's Guinness Jazz Festival, which runs in Cork over the October Bank Holiday weekend, will be headlined, not by the great Joe Henderson - sidelined by a serious illness - but by Elvin Jones, drummer in the legendary 1960s John Coltrane Quartet; Jones's group includes saxophonist Sonny Fortune and trumpeter Eddie Henderson. One of the most exciting groups, too, is likely to be the Chico Freeman Quintet, with such take-no-prisoners players as Gary Bartz, George Cables, Santi Debriano and Victor Lewis. Other names in a festival which seems to have gone for more diversity than usual include Arturo Sandoval, Tommy Flanagan with Dave O'Rourke, Hugh Fraser and the Irish Jazz Orchestra, Spike Robinson, Courtney Pine, Al Grey, Jimmy McGriff, Hendrik Meurkens, Benny Green and PAZ, a Latin fusion band from London, which will feature such fine players as Ray Warleigh and Martin Shaw. The outstanding pianist, Lynne Arriale, also makes a welcome return. It is, however, the perhaps lesser names that may surprise - Dale Barlow, for example, an excellent Australian tenor, the Montreal pianist, Lorraine Desmarais, saxophonists Steve Marcus and Andy Fusco of the Buddy Rich Orchestra, and the guitarist Ron Affif, who will play with Kenny Kirkland, Essiet Essiet and Jeff "Tain" Watts.

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