Jazz Preview: Acoustic delights of a packed weekend

Arnie Somogyi's Ambulance can be relied on to open the proceedings with style and tomorrow evening features the award-winning clarinettist Julian Marc Stringle and his Latin-influenced Dream Band. Sunday's finale is in two parts.

First, in the late afternoon, the lustrous Claire Martin, accompanied by her longstanding pianist Gareth Williams, will perform songs from her latest album, leaving Farrago, an ensemble drawn from the University of York Jazz Orchestra, to lower the curtain with a programme which will illustrate the depth of the university's jazz talent.

Next up in NCEM's jazz calendar is Lulo Reinhardt, grandnephew of the great Django, on November 30.

Sheffield Jazz moves from its usual venue, the Millennium Hall, to the Crucible Studio tomorrow night for a keenly awaited visit by Stan Tracey's octet. It has become a clich to describe Stan, 83, as the godfather of British Jazz, but the label is deserved – and the lineup he brings to Sheffield is a reflection of his status. Guy Barker, Mornington Lockett, Mark Nightingale, Clark Tracey and Andy Cleyndert are there to perform two of Tracey's major works – the Hong Kong Suite which marked the handover to China in 1997 and the Amandla Suite which was commissioned by the trade unions which merged to form Unison. All presided over by the crouching figure at the keyboard who has become a British jazz icon.