Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra - Tone Poems ( Jazz Academy 2011)

The 77-year-old jazz musician Michael Garrick is a world-class composer of spare, memorable themes and eloquent big ensemble voicings – as this collection of contemporary reworkings of his pieces reaffirms. Opening moments aside (the first track's line "Summer days are here again, time to book your holidays" representing the English tweeness that is Garrick's only downside), the impact over the next nine pieces is often audaciously swinging, and sometimes elegiacally beautiful. Garrick draws together everything from his hero Ellington's trainlike Happy Go Lucky Local feel to 1960s Mike Gibbs in the early stages. Flugelhornist son Gabriel Garrick makes a delectable job of the original Shake Keane trumpet feature on a Gil Evans-like treatment of October Woman. Rustat's Gravesong (from 1968's Jazz Praises at St Paul's) is a typically majestic piece of Garrick liturgical writing, the brooding Black Marigolds has another delectable Gabriel break, and the new arrangements reflect transformations in ensemble playing and world-jazzy folk references since the original music was conceived.
John Fordham/ guardian.co.uk