Lufthansa Festival, St John’s, Smith Square, London SW1 (020-7222 1061) 5 June, 7.30pm. Andrew Parrott discusses Bach performance, 4.45pm, Sunday 4 June, Radio 3. When Graham Haynes was a child, one of his baby-sitters was Buttercup That is, Buttercup, wife of bebop piano genius Bud Powell. She lived across the street, in the Queens neighbourhood they shared with swing trumpet giant Roy Eldridge, pianist/saxophonist and Mingus collaborator Jaki Byard and brilliant vibraphonist and star of the Modern Jazz Quartet Milt Jackson. On one occasion, she took him to visit her friends at the Coltrane residence. Part of this local jazz hall of fame, Graham’s own father, Roy Haynes, was and is one of the finest jazz drummers of the post-war period, bringing fuel and fire to bands featuring Charlie Parker, Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and many others.

When Graham Haynes was a child, one of his baby-sitters was Buttercup That is, Buttercup, wife of bebop piano genius Bud Powell. She lived across the street, in the Queens neighbourhood they shared with swing trumpet giant Roy Eldridge, pianist/saxophonist and Mingus collaborator Jaki Byard and brilliant vibraphonist and star of the Modern Jazz Quartet Milt Jackson. On one occasion, she took him to visit her friends at the Coltrane residence. Part of this local jazz hall of fame, Graham’s own father, Roy Haynes, was and is one of the finest jazz drummers of the post-war period, bringing fuel and fire to bands featuring Charlie Parker, Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and many others.
So it was hardly a huge surprise when Graham Haynes launched his own jazz career; bringing his trumpet to the adventurous New York loft sessions that comprised the city’s burgeoning “downtown” avant-garde scene, and sitting in with his father’s generation of jazz stars at the local clubs. As the Marsalis family’s shiny-shoed and unthreatening brand of neo-bop began to take hold in the early Eighties, Haynes was to be found collaborating with alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, laying the foundations of the complex, uncompromising crypto-funk that would be known as “M-Base” (Haynes was there from the start, playing with Coleman on the streets of New York for busker-money).

Specialising in cornet and flugelhorn, Haynes began making his own records. Unsurprisingly again, they were unconventional: jazz funk; jazz intermeshed with North African percussion; gentle, ambient electronica.And his latest album, released by New York’s hippest experimental jazz club and label, the Knitting Factory, is his best yet. It’s a cornet and flugelhorn-led collection of drum’n'bass tracks featuring melodies by Richard Wagner and elements of Indian classical music. (OK, a little bit of surprise would be entirely acceptable at this point.)Make no mistake, bpm is an extraordinarily intelligent project.