WHETHER or not last year was its coming-of-age, there is certainly a new maturity about Glasgow International Jazz Festival and the programme it launched last week with a live recording for BBC Radio 3 at Pacific Quay. The 22nd GIJF begins on Friday, June 20, and comfortably occupies the 10-day slot that it began with, just slightly earlier in the city's cultural calendar. It also welcomes back some names that will be familiar to those who recall the programmes of its earliest years. Great educator and superbly fluid alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, once a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and now Professor of Jazz at the University of Missouri, was then a regular visitor. His fellow altoist Lee Konitz, a former member of Miles Davis's epoch-making Birth of the Cool ensemble, played Glasgow in its annus mirabilis as European City of Culture 1990, when Davis himself put in an appearance. Both saxophonists have concerts this year at the Old Fruitmarket, a venue which was discovered and opened by the jazz festival. The programme also includes another alto sax veteran in Herb Geller, a doyen of the West Coast cool school that also spawned Art Pepper and Eric Dolphy.

The jazz festival was established just in time to catch the final performing years of jazz stars such as Miles Davis, Stan Getz and Sarah Vaughan, but in 2008 the programme mixes American veterans with younger talent and local names who are building considerable reputations themselves. There is an egalitarianism about the programme which smacks of confidence in Scottish jazz, which is helpfully stamped "homegrown" in the brochure. The co-ordinator of this part of programme, Cathie Rae, attended Celtic Connections early this year to see how the traditional music scene showcased Scotland.

"It was a real eye-opener," she says. Rae has always invited delegates to the city to hear, and hopefully book, Scots musicians. This year there will be representatives of London and Bath jazz festivals as well as the events in Manchester and Wigan. From overseas, there are visitors from Canada and current city of culture in Norway, Stavanger. Record labels Candid, Decca and Linn will all be present. Whereas previous Homegrown showcases ghettoised the local talent into short gigs and dedicated programmes, so that it could all seem too much like an audition, this year delegates will find Scots in around 30 different concerts, supporting bigger names, playing their own small concerts and appearing at the late-night club in the City Inn. But if the delegates are more free to wander, Rae expects a result. Again taking her cue from Celtic Connections, she says: "If they don't book a band, I won't be inviting them back. Celtic Connections now has a waiting list on that basis. The whole aim of Homegrown is to progress the careers of the musicians and get them gigging outside Scotland."

To that end Rae wants to emphasise that the focus is not just on the youngest, most precocious talents.

Three established Scots will be using the jazz festival platform to launch new albums. Guitarist Kevin MacKenzie, whose diverse career includes the Scottish Guitar Quartet, and the award- winning Trio AAB will be playing music from his new disc, Chiasmus. Trumpeter Ryan Quigley will be unveiling his first CD as leader of a sextet of top Scottish musicians. Rae's sister Gina has a disc of collaborations with guitarist Sandy Wright entitled On Main Street. Two other well-known names - Pianist Dave Milligan and saxophonist Paul Towndrow - will also be showcased.

The youth element is still challenging though. Glaswegian pianist Alan Benzie is the best known, having won the BBC's young jazz musician accolade. Snapping at his heels is Tom Gibbs, the son of East Lothian farming stock, who has been studying with the great John Taylor and has a high profile solo support slot at the Kontiz concert on the festival's final day. Then there's saxophonist Joe Wright, a graduate of Tommy Smith's Youth Jazz Orchestra, and still in his first year at the Royal Academy of Music, appearing with his own equally youthful trio.

Smith's senior big band, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, has recently been awarded £122,500 by the Scottish Arts Council, and will play the Steely Dan songbook at the Old Fruitmarket, which is sure to bring in the faithful. Those with a taste for international jazz are also well-catered for with perfomances by New York's The Bad Plus, Linn-signings Arnie Somogyi's Ambulance, the Polish and Norwegian trumpets of Tomasz Stanko and Nils Petter Molvaer, and firm friend of the festival Dennis Rollins and his Badbone. Blues fans will already have their tickets for Buddy Guy's show at the Carling Academy - tickets have been on sale for some time.

The list of singers appearing includes Mari Wilson, Ian Shaw, Todd Gordon and The Swingcats.

The new sense of confidence about the festival - which suggests that it knows where it's going - is confirmed at board level. New chairman David Coyne has had an eventful few years, being the man who uncovered the financial problems at the heart of charity One Plus, which have featured on the news pages of The Herald. His experience with Glasgow International Jazz Festival has been rather more positive. Brought in as a consultant by his predecessor, Simon Clarke, to write the festival's five-year plan and funding application to the Scottish Arts Council, he was asked to join the board when he completed that piece of work.

"Although I'm not an expert, I've always been fond of jazz as a live art form and I've particularly enjoyed festival shows by Mina Agossi and Dennis Rollins. It's an organisation that does good work," he says. Now director of Glasgow Works, Coyne is a believer in the power of the arts to improve people's lives and wants to see the festival diversify and reach younger audiences.

"I want to make the festival a year-round thing, not just 10 days in June, promoting the art form in other people's festivals," he says. Having consolidated the core activity of the GIJF in a fine 2008, look for the board and GIJF director Jill Rodger taking the event into new areas in future years.