HALESWORTH is hosting its first jazz and beer festival at The Cut between March 25 and 27. Entry to the beer festival is free as well as the daytime events.

The festival begins at 7.30pm on Friday, March 25, with the Sam Crockatt Quartet and Polly Gibbons, for which tickets are �15.

Saxophonist and composer Sam is a founding member of the edgy London-based Loop Collective and with his quartet has been making ripples at the jazz scene for the last couple of years.

Club diva Polly covers the jazz waterfront with a delicious contralto voice that is equally at home with ballads and blues belters, torch songs and popular tunes.

The next day, from 1pm, pianist Maurice Horhut will entertain with swing, jazz and boogie-woogie; and at 7.30pm Manchester-based trumpet player and DJ Matthew Halsall is performing. With tickets at �15, audiences can hear sounds from his atmospheric albums Sending My Love and Colour Yes.

On Sunday, March 27, from 1pm groove orientated world jazz can be heard from Pangaea – a band inspired by music from Africa, the Middle East, European folk, Afro-American, Latin America and more, allied to the experimental approach of some American jazz of the 60s,

And, at 7.30pm, Britain’s most prolific chart-topping horn player Kenny Ball will perform. After more than 50 years in the business Ball is a household name and jazzman to the core.

The Cut box office number is 0845 6732123.