When a musical jeweller with an imagination of remarkable aural refinement meets a jazz orchestra which combines playing of super-fine precision and warmth with a total commitment to the music’s singular ebb and flow, remarkable things can happen.

If nothing else, you couldn’t accuse Greta Van Fleet of short-changing fans when it came to costumes or pyro. It felt like every few minutes the Michigan throwback rockers frontman Josh Kiszka was disappearing offstage, only to reappear in a variety of jumpsuits or robes, while roasting flames regularly shot up from behind the four piece.

Start with the biggest gig of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival: Angélique Kidjo’s Royal Albert Hall show definitely stays in the mind. Part of the story is the earth-shaking power and resonance of the voice of the "Queen of African music" which transforms the Royal Albert Hall magically into an intimate space.

Well, wow. Just wow. At a time when there are fewer and fewer people I’m desperate to see live and so many of them are then disappointing, the celebration by Dave Stewart and friends of the Eurythmics catalogue, 40 years – 40 years! – after  “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” was thrilling. An exhilarating two hours of high-level musicianship brilliantly produced.

High Tide were one of many late Sixties and early Seventies British bands unearthed in the early Eighties by record collectors digging into what came after psychedelia. The bands didn’t have similar musical styles but were united by their obscurity and having sold barely any copies of their albums. All were largely forgotten until their rediscovery. Ben, Gracious!, Pussy, Red Dirt, T2, more. Who were these bands? Who were High Tide?

This UK premiere of the award-winning, Dublin-born vocalist and composer Christine Tobin’s latest project, Returning Weather, presented an otherworldly ode to finding home – casting multiple perspectives on our yearning for connection and human warmth.

Andrew Eldritch, vocalist and convent leader of the Sisters of Mercy, is a famously obtuse character. This may have made him seem somewhat mysterious over the years, but it has also meant that he has missed a few open goals too.

Combine four super-talents, masters of their instrument, and you might well expect a battle of egos or a clash of modi operandi.  Not least, as in the case of Les Égarés, a quartet made up from two seasoned duos – the virtuoso jazzers Vincent Peirani (accordeon) and  Émile Parisien (soprano sax) on the one hand, and the entrancing creative partnership of Ballaké Sissoko (kora) and Vincent Ségal (cello) on the other.  And yet…

The Cult may have only really hit paydirt in the late Eighties when they started worshipping at the altar of the Rawk Gods of more than a decade before and welcomed Rick Rubin and Bob Rock to toughen up their sound on albums like Electric and Sonic Temple. However, there are clearly many people who still look back wistfully on their post-punk years – to the Dreamtime album, to Death Cult and even further, to vocalist Ian Astbury’s first band, Southern Death Cult.

On a Friday morning under the Dom Tower, the tallest church spire in the Netherlands, our enthusiastic guide explains that we’re standing on 2000 years of history. Formed on the frontier of the Roman Empire, Utrecht originally bordered the river Rhine. But forward-thinking festival Le Guess Who?’s quarter-century rein proves that the city is no longer fenced in.