Toronto’s principal jazz fest continues to expand, reaching out to an ever-broadening audience and adding new venues, proving there is indeed life after tobacco sponsorship. Its breadth and ambition is apparent in a preview concert by great Memphis singer and reverend Al Green. June 19. Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, 1 Front St. E., 416-872-2262. Another notable show aimed at a wider audience presents funk saxophonist Maceo Parker, who recently released a tribute to Ray Charles called Roots & Grooves (2007). June 20. Sound Academy, 11 Polson St., 416-461-3625. As in past years, the festival’s main stage is at Nathan Phillips Square, with free performances throughout the day. Ticketed evening shows are a mix of jazz mainstays and performers drawn from genres as varied as R&B and Afro-pop. Dr. John provides his own New Orleans funk, June 20; Susan Tedeschi sings the blues, June 21; and James Hunter offers a mishmash of swing and R&B, June 24. The jazz events tend to be large-scale: there’s an Alto Summit, featuring saxophonists Donald Harrison, Greg Osby, Red Holloway and Bobby Watson, June 22; a double bill of pianists Oliver Jones and Ahmad Jamal, June 23; a Salute to Jazz at the Philharmonic, featuring trumpeter Roy Hargrove, June 26; and a triple bill of guitarists, with the John Abercrombie Organ Trio, the Mike Stern Trio and the John Scofield Trio, June 27. Arturo Sandoval presents an exciting combination of Cuban dance rhythms, bright arrangements and hard-bop textures, with his own fiery trumpet playing surmounting it all. June 28. The daylight hours offer opportunities to hear some outstanding shows, such as Quebec’s Effendi Jazz Lab, a label-sponsored forum for advanced composition, June 22; and the cinematically inspired L’Orkestre des pas perdus, June 24. Nathan Phillips Square, 100 Queen St. W. The most promising event may be the series of concerts at Harbourfront, and none more so than the one by the Charles Lloyd Quartet. Lloyd was the first jazz musician to craft a sound that could find a home in the great rock ballrooms of the late ’60s. His career has since ebbed and flowed, but he’s currently in the midst of a late-career flowering that shows little sign of abating. Lloyd may be the most lyrical student of John Coltrane, and he matches his gorgeous tone with long improvisations that can take their inspiration from a Motown anthem or an adapted spiritual. June 25. While the initials may have once invoked the Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Swedish group E.S.T. has developed a coherent group identity, taking the traditional instrumentation of a jazz trio and redefining it in terms that can command large audiences, with substantial amplification, electronic enhancements, rhythmic grooves and catchy motifs. June 27. — Stuart Broomer