The International Jazz Festival Prague marks its 30th year with a surprising attempt to shed some old skin and invite more international acts than usual, including a few avant-garde groups, vintage American bluesmen and Gypsy jazz players, while still maintaining solid evenings of classic jazz by local musicians.

This year's eight-night series kicks off Oct. 26 with a screening of the video The Best of the International Jazz Festival 1964–2006 and a performance by the dean of the Czech jazz scene, Milan Svoboda, who is bringing his big band to Reduta.

The following evening, local jazz trio Martin Kratochvíl, Tony Ackerman and Imram Musa Zangi open for Mudcat, a highly praised blues and ragtime jazz group from the American South (specifically, Georgia) led by slide guitarist Danny "Mudcat" Dudeck.

At Reduta Oct. 28, a trio from Switzerland, Koch-Schütz-Studer, will perform "hardcore chamber music" with Koch on clarinet and saxophones, Schütz on electric five-string cello and acoustic cello, and both musicians mixing in electronics alongside Studer on drums and percussion. This meeting of avant-garde jazz, chamber music and groove is a great step forward for the festival.

On Oct. 29, Reduta hosts Basily, a Gypsy jazz sextet from Holland influenced by Django Reinhardt, Europe's most famous Gypsy jazz guitarist, with some traditional Hungarian and Spanish Gypsy sounds in the mix. This should be a show of pure, swinging energy.

Oct. 31 brings the highlight of the festival at Lucerna Music Bar, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jaroslav Ježek, perhaps the most famous Czech jazz composer, orchestra conductor and pianist from the 1920s and '30s. Ježek was also the third name in the famous Czech theater trio "V + W + J", using the last name initials of Jiří Voskovec, Jan Werich and Ježek for their Liberated Theatre. He died in exile in New York in 1942.

Ježek's ragtime and swing era jazz compositions will be performed by the Petr Kořínek Jazz Orchestra, composed of professors from the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatoire. Opening the show will be harmonica player Sugar Blue and American jazz and gospel singer Vera Love with the GK Brothers Blues Band.

That same evening at Reduta, classically trained French jazz pianist and composer Sebastien Paindestre leads his trio with Jean-Claude Oleksiak on bass and Antoine Paganotti on drums, mixing jazz standards with his own blues-inspired compositions.

On Nov. 1, Italians S. Forti and A. Machione and the Traditional Jazz Studio of Pavel Smetáček play together. Local group J.J. Jazzmen will open the show with a blast of New Orleans jazz.