THE MENACE of the impending Trump presidency was reflected in the anxious soundscape created by many of the musicians at this year’s London Jazz Festival.

Tenor saxophonist Trish Clowes asked everyone at her free-stage Barbican performance to shake hands and hug each other in anti-Trump solidarity before she played her tune Blue Calm, while young pianist Elliot Galvin said it was “now very pertinent” to play Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife, conjuring an aura of murderous dark forces at work as he did so.

And the diaphanous blues cadences of Are You Glad to Be in America? rang out from the slashing guitar of James Blood Ulmer at Rich Mix.

So much great music within a week, where to start? How about the great tenor saxophonist Chico Freeman blowing his own looping and mellow melody To Hear a Teardrop in the Rain or the veteran Cecil McBee with his lithe, plunging bass playing The Peacemaker at The Cookers concert in Cadogan Hall, preceded by Eddie Henderson’s visceral trumpet choruses and Billy Harper’s surging saxophone solo in Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart?

There was more tenor sax eloquence from Andy Sheppard at the Laurent Cugny big band gig at Rich Mix, where he played a long, lustrous solo in Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat, Charles Mingus’s tribute to Lester Young.

At the Foyles Jazz Salon, Denys Baptiste paid homage to John Coltrane in his renditions of Ascent and After the Rain. He finished with a moving tenor duet with one of his own early saxophone heroes Steve Williamson on Vigil, which was underscored by the lucidly beautiful piano notes of Nikki Yeoh, Gary Crosby’s delving bass and Rod Young’s empathetic drums.

Gambian kora virtuoso Sona Jobarteh conducted a brilliant call-and-response with her band’s hand drummer at Rich Mix while at the Barbican Afghan-German singer Simin Tander (pictured) “looked for the divine among ourselves” with her Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavson (pictured) and drummer Jarle Vespestad as she sang Norwegian hymns and folksongs in Pushto, creating a sensuous and transcendent soundscape.

The sonic intercourse of the acoustic and electronic was at the heart of Black Top’s astonishing performance at the same venue with Pat Thomas’s keyboards and Orphy Robinson’s marimbas and computers, conjuring the future in the present in every note.

At King’s Palce, the interactions of the three scintillating jazzwomen of Les Diaboliques — Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer, French bassist Joelle Leandre and Scottish vocalist Maggie Nichols — set the venue on fire with their joy, humour, tenderness and powerful musicianship.

On the final night of this festival of jazz cosmopolitanism, there was a profound tribute to one of the music’s great internationalists, the late Shenandoah-born bassist Charlie Haden.

Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, led by that Rosa Luxemburg of improvisation Carla Bley, confronted a troubled world with their living commitment to a better and more just life.

Long live their indomitable and revolutionary jazz spirit.