Charles Kraus: This week's new live music

Han Bennink, On tour

Dutch percussion master Han Bennink goes back far enough to have been the natural accompanist to American jazz giants Dexter Gordon and Eric Dolphy on their visits to the Netherlands. But for all the irrepressible swing and relaxation that makes him one of the great jazz drummers, Bennink's been a key figure on the European improv and free jazz scenes since the mid-60s, marrying arrhythmically graceful grooving to a knockabout comic's repertoire of circus-drummer rolls, clacking, yelps, crash stops and acrobatics. The Dutch one-off plays the second of two nights at the Vortex with his own trio of Simon Toldam (piano) and Joachim Badenhorst (clarinet), but he plays the first half with a local fellow-percussionist. Steve Noble did the honours last night, and acclaimed People Band multi-instrumentalist Terry Day joins him tonight.

The Vortex Jazz Club, N16, Sat

John Fordham

Mount Kimble, On tour

Dubstep can be all things to all people: threatening, authentic, intellectual, pop even. Mount Kimbie, a duo comprising Dom Maker and Kai Campos, seem inclined towards the last of these, their great 2010 album Crooks & Lovers retaining this music's minicab-journey vibe, all deep bass and vocal samples, while freshening things up with random clicks, static bursts and hooks. So far, 2011 is a fork in the road. James Blake, their pal, remixer and sometime member of their live band has attracted enormous praise for his debut, while labelmate Boxcutter has taken a turn for the Jamiroquai. In this company, Mount Kimbie, refreshingly, sound different again, as if Boards Of Canada had been drawn to urban rather than rural spaces.

Norwich Arts Centre, Sat; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Sun; Audio, Brighton, Tue; Thekla, Bristol, Wed; Heaven, WC2, Thu; Deaf Institute, Manchester, Fri

John Robinson

Mahler 10, London

Concert series marking the centenary of Gustav Mahler's death abound this season, but neither of the London cycles of his symphonies is including any of the seven versions made of his famously unfinished work, the Tenth. But the National Youth Orchestra is filling that gap; the main work in Vasily Petrenko's concert with the orchestra at the Festival Hall is the most frequently heard of those attempts to realise Mahler's vision: that composed by the British musicologist Deryck Cooke. Petrenko is prefacing Mahler's extraordinary vision of transcendence with another composition that deals with the ephemeral nature of life, Judith Weir's We Are Shadows.

Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Sun

Andrew Clements

Flamin' Grooves, London

These days, it's a lot less grim out there if you're a cult band past your prime. After the sterling work put in by the people at ATP and their Don't Look Back shows, the sight of a band reforming is now accompanied neither by a suspicion of selling out, or a worrying top note of chicken in a basket. Lately, this has brought some pretty valuable reformations: cult bands like the Sonics, the Monks, the Zombies and now at the Le Beat Bepok� weekender the Flamin' Groovies. The Groovies undoubtedly had several moments of pure genius in their unsung career ? the garage punk classic Teenage Head; the 70s 45 Shake Some Action for two ? but they were misunderstood by every scene in which they participated, from San Francisco psych to UK punk. Now the British invasion-obsessed original members Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney return to prove that if you find your thing, you'll find your audience ? even if it's 45 years later.

229 The Venue, W1, Sun

Norma Winstone/Glauco Venier/Klaus Gesing, Oxford

The subtlety, meticulous technique and improviser's imagination of vocal virtuoso Norma Winstone have served many prestigious employers, from UK jazz composers Michael Garrick and Kenny Wheeler to Americans Steve Swallow and the late Billie Holiday pianist Jimmy Rowles. But late in this Grammy-nominated singer's 40-year career, she has found perhaps the most compatible setting of her life in a sublime trio with young Italian pianist Glauco Venier and German soprano saxist and bass clarinettist Klaus Gesing. This gig on an imaginative Oxford Jazz Festival programme (also featuring Kit Downes and guitarist Nicolas Meier) might include anything from a Mexican love song to an Armenian lullaby, or a Wayne Shorter theme next to a 13th-century ballad. Winstone brings her quiet vividness to all of it.

Macdonald Randolph Hotel, Sun

Timber Timbre, London & Manchester

Humorous, vaguely sinister and ? above all ? theatrical, Timber Timbre bring to their music some of the conventions of the country house murder mystery. That's certainly the tenor of their darkly punning fourth album Creep On, Creepin' On. Alive with the ghosts of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, even the Cramps, their songs are peopled by extreme characters condemned to rattle around inside the album's subdued production. Will anyone get out alive? Essentially the project of Canadian musician Taylor Kirk, Timber Timbre have over five years evolved from a heart-on-sleeve bearing of Kirk's soul in the indie guitar idiom to what sounds like the Horrors covering songs from Grease: The Musical. As bad as things may appear in their music, it's to Timber Timbre's credit they seem able to see the funny side.

ICA, SW1, Wed; Deaf Institute, Manchester, Thu

John Fordham

John Robinson

Andrew Clements

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