It could have been a cow lowing in the distance, the sound drifting across a barren landscape. Its tone transformed after echoing through hillsides and ravines. Actually, it was Karl Seglem blowing into the horn of a goat. Suddenly, he stopped and began wordlessly chanting. The other two musicians on stage at St Luke's kept their heads down and continued providing the sonic wash knitting together this collaboration between the classical, jazz and uncategorisable.

New Orleans brass remains the elemental party sound of the Crescent City with groups of young black men providing a bright, swaggering soundtrack to jazz funerals and second line parades. Originally, the brass bands grew out of working men’s clubs that acted as de facto unions in the then segregated south. The likes of Louis Armstrong (and many others) got an early musical initiation via playing on the street and even today it's possible to visit New Orleans and find brass bands busking in the French Quarter or, if more established, crowding onto a stage in a local bar.

Mozart: The Four Horn Concertos Marc Geujon, Orchestre Paul Kuentz/Paul Kuentz (Calliope)

“This is such fun”. Martin Horntveth, Jaga Jazzist’s drummer, can’t contain his excitement. Standing up behind his kit, he radiates joy. Considering that he and his band are Norwegian, typically not given to overstatement, what he describes as fun would be off the pleasure scale by non-Nordic standards. The meeting of Jaga Jazzist and The Britten Sinfonia was an unqualified success, one of those rare one-off concerts where band and their temporary collaborators seamlessly connect.

As all the background information to this new release can be found in Nick Levine’s recent interview with Neneh Cherry for theartsdesk, let's get straight down to scrutinising the music. For this serious contender for album of the year deserves more than just a reshuffling of the information on its press release.

If this gig by the new vocal supergroup, BLINQ, had to be summed up by a musical expression, then poco a poco crescendo would fit the bill rather nicely. The group, Brendan Reilly, Liane Carroll, Ian Shaw, Natalie Williams, plus the Mercury Prize nominated virtuoso pianist, Gwilym Simcock – what's wrong with a bit of BLING? – gave their first ever performance at Ronnie Scott's last August.

Coming from a thriving East London improvisation scene, "aquatic Krautrock experimentalists" Snorkel have made a logical step forward and released a single that was entirely recorded in one, improvised take. We are very happy to present here in its full ten-and-a-half minute glory the video of the recording, as well as a free download of a remix by Crewdson of another track from the session.

Django Bates ascribes the variety of musical influences at play in his work to his childhood - growing up listening to his father's remarkably eclectic record collection. In the first part of my conversation with Django, he talks about Loose Tubes, StoRMChaser and his new post at Bern University of the Arts.

Born in Beckenham, Kent, in 1960, Django Bates is a self-taught composer and founder member of the seminal big band Loose Tubes (1983-1990). As well as leading his own groups, Human Chain and Delightful Precipice, he has composed works for the Brodsky Quartet, Joanna MacGregor, Evelyn Glennie, the Britten Sinfonia and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra, amongst others. In 1997, Bates was awarded the prestigious Jazzpar prize, known as the 'Nobel Prize of Jazz' (previous recipients include Lee Konitz, Roy Haynes and Geri Allen).

Neneh Cherry has never been conventional. The singer and rapper's latest album is a collaboration with The Thing, a Swedish free jazz trio who have previously tackled songs by PJ Harvey and The White Stripes. If anything, the presence of Cherry has made them braver: The Cherry Thing features reworkings of The Stooges' "Dirt", Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" and MF Doom's "Accordion". It's gutsy stuff, but it works. The album already sounds like a contender for the end of year lists.