Herbie Hancock was in an expansive mood at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival’s opening-night gala—at the Orpheum on June 20—and he had every right to be. Just two days before, he’d been named musician of the year by the New York City–based Jazz Journalists Association, while his guitarist, Benin-born Lionel Loueke, was dubbed best up-and-comer.

The music followed suit, in a two-hour-long extravaganza that touched on everything from a keytar-led take on Hancock’s proto-funk hit from 1962, “Watermelon Man”, to a brief sampling from his latest effort, the 2008-Grammy-winning River: The Joni Letters. But the veteran performer’s generosity sometimes verged on being too much of a good thing, especially in a lengthy encore that degenerated into pointless jazz-funk wanking.

The keyboardist is calling his latest venture onto the concert stage the River of Possibilities tour, but at times his Orpheum show more resembled a series of pools: some clear and inviting, others murky and dotted with dubious floaters. In general, whenever Hancock was at the piano the music was brilliant; at 68, he possesses an astonishingly vigorous touch, and his improvisations built on the kind of probing intelligence that made him a star during the turbulent ’60s. On synthesizer, though, he trotted out some timbres that were wince-inducingly reminiscent of the tasteless ’80s, and his song selection was curious at best.

The U2/B. B. King collaboration “When Love Comes to Town” was bombastic in the original and wasn’t improved on here. And neither of the bandleader’s two guest vocalists were particularly compelling on River’s Joni Mitchell–penned material. On “Edith and the Kingpin”, Amy Keys proved skilled but anonymous, while Sonya Kitchell’s habit of swallowing her vowels makes her ill-suited to interpreting the Prairie-born songwriter’s etched-glass lyrics.

Other than Hancock himself, saxophonist Chris Potter was the evening’s instrumental winner, generating genuine excitement with intense but thoughtful solos. In general, though, this all-star band didn’t gel: drum legend Vinnie Colaiuta overplayed, bassist Dave Holland was frequently inaudible, and Loueke—whose own trio contributed an impressive opening set—appeared to have run out of ideas by encore time.

As spectacle, Hancock’s festival-opening appearance gets a passing grade. As jazz? Maybe not.

Perhaps more than any other jazz festival in North America, Vancouver’s is about hybridity—the point where jazz meets and fuses with other musical genres. That these unions can offer both pleasure and peril was amply demonstrated in a pair of Western Front concerts that brought together jazz and classical music.

On June 20, baroque violinist Maya Homburger and her bass-playing husband, Barry Guy, performed an extraordinary set in which free improvisation, Guy’s intricate compositions, and excerpts from Heinrich Ignaz Biber’s Mystery Sonatas all illuminated one another. The duo’s deep rapport proved particularly effective in bringing a contemporary gloss to the Biber pieces, which sounded so fresh it was hard to believe they’re more than 400 years old.

In contrast, the improv-oriented pairing of French keyboardist Benoit Delbecq and Montreal’s Quatuor Bozzini never quite got off the ground on June 21. Delbecq contributed hallucinatory prepared-piano soundscapes, but his string-quartet colleagues sounded hushed and tentative. We’d hoped to hear two worlds colliding, but the effect was more that of a séance in which the desired spirit never materialized.

Caribbean party fever erupted at the end of the Gastown Jazz program on June 21, when La Gran Union and Wil Campa launched into another of the fast-and-festive salsa numbers that peppered their set. Conga lines instantly appeared throughout Maple Tree Square and began weaving and swaying through a crowd of hundreds of people, all on their feet cheering after almost two hours of hot Cuban dance music. And to finish the song with a Havana flourish, the 10-piece outfit—including two trombonists and two trumpeters—marched off the stage playing, and snaked its way among the revellers. Genial bandleader Campa, who has a sweet and powerful voice, proved a relentless animator for audience and musicians alike, prowling the stage with microphone in hand, breaking into dance moves, and exhorting everyone to join in on the many call-and-response songs. It felt like summer had finally arrived.

Former Vancouver saxophonist and composer Michael Blake is an amazingly eclectic artist, and he displayed several facets of his complex character at the Roundhouse on June 22. With the sextet Amor de Cosmos, a dream team of this city’s top players, Blake explored a spectrum of styles and genres, sometimes within the same composition. “So Long Seymour” comprised elements of contemporary classical, bebop, and free jazz, and one of the early passages had a Middle Eastern maqam flavour. The spacious music frequently shifted pace and mood, and had as its highlight two brief but brilliant duets, first Blake and trumpeter Brad Turner, and later keyboardist Chris Gestrin and vibraphone player Sal Ferreras. The set’s final item, “The Wash Away”, was a jubilant African groove. Inspired by the music of kora player Keba Cissoko, it started out in 11/8 time and gave all of the musicians room to improvise together within its expansive structure, down to the final rattle of mules’ hooves.