In the seams of the city between the club scene for students and baroque-for-tourists lie rich veins of more recondite music. But they are more difficult for the uninitiated to dig out. Jazz still has a lower profile outside London, and classical music from the 20th century is still viewed as difficult and abstruse. Despite the success of groups such as the Buena Vista Social Club, much extraordinary world music still struggles to find an audience. Nevertheless all this rich music is available in Oxford from organisations and co-operatives with programmes restarting this autumn if you know where to look.

For jazz lovers the foremost venue is The Spin in The Wheatsheaf, down Wheatsheaf Yard off High Street. Here a weekly Thursday night gig in the upstairs room features artists from the UK, Europe and the United States, with consistently high quality music from both guest bands and guest soloists performing with the excellent house band. The club kicks off today with the Transatlantic Collection, a British/US mix led by American saxophonist Patrick Cornelius. Later in the autumn this is balanced by the Canadian Connection. Other delights include virtuoso singer, Juliet Kelly, the return from Argentina of the much-loved Luis D’Agostino who has been honing his technique to even higher levels and for a more free-form evening, the improvising duo of Pat Thomas and Steve Williamson, who stormed the 2007 London Jazz Festival.

The Wheatsheaf is now under new and more sympathetic management. For more information on Spin events and tickets go to www.spinjazz.com Another jazz venue that hasn’t even taken a break over the summer is the Tuesday evening sessions at the Big Bang restaurant in Walton Street with an excellent mix of local and national talent, while the restaurant itself provides an atmospheric cellar room with an extensive menu of organic sausages. This is a fine place for those who wish to mix jazz with good food and company. Some gigs this month are already sold out but later in October there’s more straight ahead jazz from Dave Lewis and Nigel Price, while in November local saxophonist Otto Caretta takes the stage. Go to www.bigbangrestaurants.co.uk/Oxford/jazz.htm for detailed information and tickets.

To get a taste of free improvisation and music where the freedoms of jazz can overlap with the complexities of classical music Oxford Improvisers continue their monthly events at the Folly Bridge Inn, in Abingdon Road. Next Tuesday this will feature Gannets, a group with a strong jazz influence including Chris Cundy on contrabass clarinet, reed magician Alex Ward and Oxford-based bassist Dominic Lash (pictured right). In mid November Oxford Improvisers will also be putting on their third two-day Cohesion Festival of new music at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Room. This will be a mix of workshops and performance with music from both members of the Improvisers and international players and composers including Phil Minton and French guitarist David Bausseron. For more information about this and other Oxford Improvisers events and workshops go to www.oxfordimprovisers.com Oxford Contemporary Music was set up some years ago to promote new classical music. More recently the programming has altered to cover folk, jazz and world music with some contemporary classical. Nevertheless much of what OCM puts on is music that would otherwise not be available and by working in co-operation with other organisations they are able to set up unusual projects. Composer Robert Jarvis is working on The Sounds of Oxfordshire with BBC Oxford and OCM have linked up with Big Village to bring some unusual concerts to Oxford. On October 3 Rango, a mystic Sudanese trance group, are at the Wesley Memorial Church and on October 30 South African soul diva Simphire Dana is at the 02 Academy. For more information about Oxford Contemporary Music go to www.ocmevents.org, and for Big Village go to www.bigvillage.org.

On the last Wednesday of the month at the Half Moon in St Clements the Trish Elphinstone Quintet play — this month featuring saxophonist Pete Mcphail. Dorothy Shaw plays solo piano most afternoons at Joe’s café in Summertown. Lastly the North Wall in Summertown has both jazz, classical and folk in their auditorium starting with Dan Teper and Dave Colton this Saturday. Go to www.northwall.com for details.