Many of the Steinway grand pianos in the Jazz Fest venues are on loan from the Eastman School of Music. They're used to having beautiful Chopin preludes played on them. Some of them have probably forgotten that they are percussion instruments. After Chuchito Valdes' two performances on the Steinway grand at Montage Grille Sunday night, that piano will never forget that it is a percussion instrument.

In the most incredible performance of the festival (for me, so far) Valdes played the keyboard like a conguero, his hands moved up and down with speeds reminiscent of a master conga player. He played chords --- and sometimes clusters of notes with his elbow --- with such rhythmic force and dexterity that the piano became a new instrument.

Valdes' grandfather Bebo and his father, Chucho, are two of the greatest musicians to emerge from Cuba in the last 70 years, so it was not surprising that Chuchito was great. At both shows the audience couldn't get enough.

Valdes' bassist and drummer, also from Cuba, were equally fantastic musicians. The group breathed as one. When Valdes quieted down the drums and bass fell to a whisper. When he unleashed a percussive solo, they went along for the raucous ride.

Tommy Smith & Brian Kellock had a similar symbiotic musical relationship going at Christ Church. Kellock, a wonderful pianist, and Smith, a great saxophonist, knew each other as well as they knew their instruments. The resulting duets would build into furious fevers or recede into delicate interludes without even a nod.

Aside from the last song --- "Moonlight In Vermont" --- each tune they played was made up of several songs. When they finished (after 15-25 minutes per tune) they would say things like, "I can't remember what we played," or ask the audience for help remembering. They weren't kidding. Familiar songs floated in and out: "Round Midnight," "Secret Love," "Alfie"... It was as if all of music is one continuous river. You follow a tune for a while and then it flows into the next. There's some truth to that.

After seeing him perform with McCoy Tyner at a previous festival, I was anxious to see the Charnett Moffett Trio at Harro East. Moffett is an absolutely astounding bassist, quite possibly the best on the planet. He displayed no shortage of skill Sunday, whether playing at insanely fast speeds, playing bass and lead parts at the same time, or tapping harmonics and low notes with his bow simultaneously.

When he traded his double bass for an electric bass he did something even more unusual. Accompanied by a simple sitar-like instrument playing a drone, he made his electric bass into kind of a sitar, playing in the high register in a manner reminiscent of great Indian players. It was weird in a good way.

All of this built up to the end of the set, when the piano and drums that had been on the stage all along finally had people playing them. They were joined by a trumpet player. When he blasted the first note I remembered that Moffett's first name, Charnett, has meaning.

His father, drummer Charlie Moffett, had played with Ornette Coleman in the mid-1960's, and "Charnett" is a combination of his father's and Coleman's first names. Moffett himself played with Coleman in the mid-1990's. So, for those who found the music a bit too abstract, the Coleman connection is probably the reason.

I've been amazed by Stanley Jordan and his touch technique on guitar since the mid-1980's, but I've never heard him live. I finally will Monday night at Harro East. I'll also catch the Ryan Quigley Sextet At Christ Church and another great Cuban pianist, Hilario Duran, at Max of Eastman Place.