The sophisticated and exquisitely crafted sound of The Hilliard Ensemble has, over the past four decades, become one of the most distinctive pleasures on the choral scene. One of the several pioneers of the medieval and Renaissance repertoire to emerge in the Seventies, The Hilliards have, nonetheless, made this music their own, their glistening sound offering a more contemporary aesthetic than that of historically-specialist period performances. Named after Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, they share that portraitist’s delicacy, urbanity and intense colouring.

Drummer Billy Cobham has been an innovative and influential figure since the 1960s across jazz, Latin, funk and the areas of fusion between. He has played with Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Randy and Michael Brecker, and in 1971 was a founder-member of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, widely considered to have been the greatest jazz-rock fusion group of all.

Pianist Ivo Neame, whose quintet gave a masterclass in the more reflective, concept-driven variety of contemporary jazz at Kings Place last night, is one of the lynchpins of the London scene. As well as leading and composing for this, his own group, he’s also a member of the LOOP Collective, supertrio Phronesis, and Marius Neset’s Golden Xplosion. Playing a mixture of new originals and a couple of pieces from their last album, Yatra, Neame’s quintet demonstrated both the highest collective technique and a winsome sense of wit and whimsy.

The on-stage collaboration between north-Norwegian ambient maestro Biosphere and his similarly inclined but sonically darker countryman Deathprod was a one off. At Oslo’s Tape to Zero festival, Biosphere and Deathprod bought the you-had-to-be-there moment. The pair had collaborated for a remix project of composer Arne Nordheim in 1998, but this was about new music.

There's something about the way in which the musical surfaces of album opener “Urban Control” glitter and sparkle that immediately announces you're listening to a Phronesis recording. By the time Danish bassist Jasper Høiby reaches the end of his first, elegantly constructed, descending phrase, you already sense the impending explosion of motifs and rhythmic energy that it will detonate. And, sure enough, once British pianist Ivo Neame and Swedish drummer Anton Eger are brought into play, the trio's characteristically rich counterpoint takes on an unstoppable momentum.

In the 1960s and early 70s drummer Jack DeJohnette, now 71, was learning his craft with nearly everyone who was anyone, including Coltrane, Monk, Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. Last night at the Barbican, he was the presiding spirit (if not, technically, leader) in a new multi-generational “supergroup”, the Spring Quartet, alongside Blue Note’s star saxophonist Joe Lovano (61), and two thirtysomethings, pianist Leo Genovese, and the winner of the 2011 best new artist Grammy Esperanza Spalding.

John Coltrane’s extravagant, trance-like saxophone-playing is often considered the pinnacle of jazz technique, but for Evan Parker, who celebrated his 70th birthday with a concert at Kings Place last night, it was only the starting point.

“Art, real art, is a denial of the status quo. A tradition that values the role of the individual.” Speaking in Estonia’s capital for the opening of Tallinn Music Week, the Baltic country’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves is referring to what’s just over his shoulder. Freedom is on his mind.

“The most influential band of the last ten years. Period,” said Jez Nelson, of BBC Radio 3’s Jazz On 3, announcing Polar Bear to the XOYO audience last night. It’s difficult to live up to an introduction like that, especially when the band wanted the audience to focus on their new album, which was launched that night. They gave a typically committed and masterful performance of their well-received new album, In Each And Every One, which drummer, bandleader and composer Seb Rochford introduced with his trademark bashful charm.   

Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset is not yet 30, and he already has several acclaimed albums with smaller forces to his increasingly neon-lit name. With this release of new and adapted work for 12-piece big band, he sets out to work on a larger (and notoriously complex) canvas. It’s intense, dramatic and finely wrought, with numerous changes of style and direction.