This year's Guinness Cork Jazz Festival was marked by the growing globalisation of the music. Ray Comiskey reports on an event that got the balance right.

The great French jazz critic and composer, Andre Hodeir, once wrote that a mark of classicism in the arts was unanimity of style. Post-classicism, on the other hand, was what happened when that consensus broke down and people insisted on going off and doing their own thing. He seemed a bit sniffy about it; maybe something was lost in translation.

But when consensus disappears, what consenting adults get up to musically is often much more interesting, even if the thoughtpolice haven't yet got round to making it all legal. And there was much in the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival this year to reflect that kind of diversity, reinforcing a growing trend in the festival's programming evident in the latter stages of the past decade.

Partly, the kind of diversity now being sought and delivered in Cork has been born of necessity. The veterans, whether jazz legends or spear carriers of the past, have mostly been winnowed out by time and the Grim Reaper. The new veterans are usually third-generation players such as John Abercrombie, Joe Zawinul, Kenny Wheeler and John Scofield - all, coincidentally, part of this year's event - who came up in the 1960s or slightly later, when already there were more stylistic highways, byways and even a few culs-de-sacs to pick from.

But there is another shift characteristic of recent times which was reflected in this year's festival. It's not simply that jazz music has fragmented so much that distant relations at the extremes might scarcely give each other a nod; it's that Europe is in some ways more exciting in jazz terms than the US. There's a kind of globalisation of jazz diversity going on and Europe is at least as central to it as the country where the music began.

Explicit acknowledgement of this came in the form of a new award, the Guinness Jazz In Europe Award, which went to the celebrated Swedish pianist, Esbjorn Svensson. It was presented to him at the Everyman Theatre by the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, on Sunday.

But there was an even more explicit example of this in one of the best concerts I heard over the weekend in Cork, when the Triskel hosted a couple of exceptional trios on Saturday night. One was a pickup group; the other was a trio of colleagues who have played and recorded together often in the past.

Two Europeans, bassist Ronan Guilfoyle and saxophonist Julian Arguelles, joined the cutting edge American drummer, Jim Black, for a superbly enjoyable set embracing as much structure as needed and as much freedom as they could mutually respond to coherently. It was intense, exhilarating and a credit to all concerned, with Black, in particular, little short of astonishing in his range of invention and the sheer musicality with which he used it. If jazz is the sound of surprises, this was full of them - mostly pleasant. The material ranged from Ornette Coleman's Broadway Blues to an Indian-flavoured Guilfoyle original in five, Tenski, to a standard, I Wish I Knew.

They were in no way overshadowed by the three great musicians who followed them. Trumpeter and flugelhorn player Kenny Wheeler, guitarist John Abercrombie and pianist Marc Copland produced music of the utmost warmth and delicacy. The ballads, especially - a standard, How Deep Is The Ocean and two gorgeous examples of the genre, Judgement and # 114, by Wheeler, were magnificent, lyricism personified.

The Triskel had a particularly strong programme throughout the main festival days. The Saturday afternoon double-bill, with Louis Stewart and Myles Drennan joining the bass and drums team of Peter Washington and Lewis Nash, and the rising young American saxophonist, Abraham Burton backed by the US-based Irish ex-pats, Fintan O'Neill and Darren Beckett, plus bassist Matt Penman, were by all accounts rapturously received.

Sunday in the Triskel also had a US-Irish flavour. Dubliner Christine Tobin, who has steadily grown in vocal and interpretive strength, gave an assured, individual and authoritative performance, backed by a really fine British band - Phil Robson (guitar), Liam Noble (piano), Jeremy Brown (bass) and Sebastian Rochford (drums); the support for this Sunday afternoon concert came from the young Dublin band, Orpheus, which included the hugely impressive drummer, Sean Carpio.

That night at the Triskel he was also drafted in at short notice, with saxophonist Brendan Doyle, to complete a quartet for guitarist Mike Nielsen's Don't Fret group; bassist Michael Coady and Nielsen were the only regulars. Considering the demanding nature of Nielsen's music, they played exceptionally well. And the music itself, with echoes of Monk, Tristano, folk and Indian, came across as fresh, original and imaginative.

The Triskel's headliner for that concert, offered the festival's main opportunity to hear pianist Jason Moran's trio, with Tarus Mateen (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums) in a civilised, listening venue. He didn't disappoint. This gifted pianist and his colleagues wove a densely textured tapestry of sound and rhythm, but always with a sense of focus and cohesion which was, at times, breath-taking in its virtuosity and its willingness to take chances.

Though the festival's other great listening venue, the Everyman, had a broader stylistic range, it's a mark of how well the festival's programme achieved a balance that, notwithstanding the considerable difference in their respective capacities and in the kind of jazz they featured, both venues had full or nearly full houses for all events.

Anyone marooned by Saturday afternoon's stormy weather at the Everyman could at least take consolation from a concert with considerable appeal. Organist Barbara Dennerlein, a crisply swinging and beautifully articulated player, was backed by the BBC Radio Big Band. Under the direction of American Jiggs Whigham, the band was in fine form, packed with quality jazzmen, including trumpeter Gerard Presencer, saxophonist Andy Panayi and Belfast vibist Anthony Kerr, and playing charts which harked back to the style of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis orchestra and the Clarke-Boland Big Band of the 1960s.

Just as tasty on the same bill was the trio of Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. His classical background was evident in his lovely touch and clean execution, and he drew on this, his ethnic roots and jazz for his music. It was exquisitely performed, almost too much so; just occasionally it felt as if it needed someone to drop the dishes.

Sunday afternoon at the Everyman included a splendid set by the Esbjorn Svensson trio, who were originally intended to top the bill. However, plane delays meant they went on first, to allow saxophonist Dewey Redman's group time to get in from the airport, check in at their hotel and get ready to perform.

For a man in his 70s, as Redman is, it must have been draining. He sounded a bit tired and, despite his history as a perennial avant-gardist, almost conventional, but he and the quartet put on a show which, given the circumstances, was a persuasive piece of professionalism.

Elsewhere, at the Guinness Festival Club next door, there was more conventional music. One of the best was organist Mike Carr's hard bop quartet, with trumpeter Steve Fishwick, in even better form than on the band's new CD, sounding like the late, great Lee Morgan. And there was hip fun with a young Norwegian vocal octet, Apes & Babes, as well as brief opportunities to drop by when guitarist Tommy Halferty and singer Melanie O'Reilly (with Brian Dunning) performed with their respective groups.

As always, though, the mark of a good Cork festival is the problem of being in two places at the same time; the ones that got away this time included Brad Mehldau, the brilliant young American trumpeter, Jeremy Pelt, the Zawinul Syndicate, Bill Frisell's band and a host of others. Yes, you could say it was a good festival.