Things for every serious jazz fan to do before they die, number one: catch the North Sea Jazz Festival. This long-weekend extravaganza is an immense Dutch treat, a jazz feast that is overkill on an epic scale. The organisers book absolutely everybody in the A and B-list jazz world, cram them simultaneously into a multiplex of more than a dozen halls and let them rip, non-stop from noon to midnight. Shows change every hour and one ticket gets you into all of them, posing continuously tough choices of what to hear and what to miss. The all-weekend pass feels like being a kid locked in a sweetshop. The only surcharges are for special events, for example when a whole line of guest stars assembles for one Jazz at the Phil-style show, as captured on the bonus track of this splendid CD/DVD double-disc production. Yet even without such dynamic dinosaurs as Arnett Cobb, Buddy Tate, Budd Johnson and Illinois Jacquet exchanging mating calls onstage, this live album would be hard to ignore. For Dexter Gordon is in prime late-period form, his tone at its most magisterial, his poise remarkable on the speedy opener, ‘It's You or No One’, his suave ballad artistry unrivalled on ‘More Than You Know’. And his backing group is one of the best of his career, both pre and post Europe. Drummer Eddie Gladden cooks continuously, Rufus Reid's booming, booting basslines make a big difference and Kirk Lightsey's extended uptempo piano solo on the set-closing blues, ‘Backstairs’, is magnificent. Unreservedly recommended.