GREAT excitement greets the return after 24 years of iconoclastic big band Loose Tubes. Heavily featured in this month's Jazzwise magazine, four members of the band explain why they again ready to “stir up more musical mayhem.”

They are unlike any other big band – no sharp suits or music stands with the band logo; instead a riotous group of patchwork jackets, flowery shirts and stripey trousers and a style of music which draws on South African township music and reggae as much as the American jazz tradition.

Avoiding any hint of a self-indulgent, nostalgic reunion, the band will premiere some new compositions at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival on Saturday, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 from four of the main composers: Steve Berry, Django Bates, Chris Batchelor and Eddie Parker. Next week a residency at Ronnie Scott's beckons and there will be an appearance at the Brecon Jazz Festival on August 8.

Two ex-University of York alumni will feature in the line-up. Flautist/saxophonist Eddie Parker is a music graduate and saxophonist Julian Nicholas played regularly around York when an undergraduate.

Somewhere in the archives of BBC Radio York there is a mid-1980s broadcast recording of Fast Forward, a group co-led by Julian and your writer, with Bobby Hurst (piano), Trevor King (drums) and Asha Elfenbein (bass). It was recorded at one of the band's regular Friday sessions at long-defunct Skeldergate restaurant, Sweeney Todds, by Victor Lewis Smith, who was at the time a Radio York producer.

Still on radio, the Cheltenham Jazz Festival will have a few tasters on BBC Radio 2. Jamie Cullum presents a three-hour slot from 3pm from the festival and his Tuesday show will feature more extracts and guests. Note also Friday Night Is Music Night tomorrow at 8pm, when Guy Barker will conduct his big band, plus the BBC Concert Orchestra in a themed programme recalling the music of the Prohibition era. On Sunday at 9pm, Clare Teal will broadcast more from the Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

Tonight's live jazz in York will be with Bejazzled and Mike Riley at the comfort zone of Middleton's Hotel, Skeldergate, at 8.30pm. Friday music has started again at Middleton's, but as an experiment it will be with some leading regional artists in the acoustic singer/songwriter vein (01904 611570).

Sunday jazz in York begins at Kennedy's Café Bar, Little Stonegate, with John Marley (bass), Paul Smith (drums) and guests (01904 620222) and continues with the Ian Chalk's sparky Firebird Quartet at the Phoenix Inn, George Street at 8.30pm.

The Kate Peters Quartet returns to the Phoenix on Monday at 8.30pm and the celebrated jazz jam will be at the Phoenix on Wednesday (01904 656401).

Jazz travellers make a beeline for Wakefield Jazz every Friday and tomorrow night's band is led by Gilad Atzmon's right-hand man, pianist Frank Harrison and his trio (01977 680542). Jazz in the Spa on Saturday night features the High Society Jazz Band with music from New Orleans to Ellington (01937 844898).

Scarborough Jazz runs on Wednesday at the Cask Inn, Cambridge Terrace, hosts Octopus, with an impressive library of big band arrangements made to fit this exciting eight-piece (01723 500570).