French trumpeter-arranger Mary is best known as a small group leader but also plays regularly in the top Parisian big bands, including the Vintage Orchestra. This is his debut as big band writer-performer, its 10 compositions all his, and conceived in part as tributes to Duke Pearson and Slide Hampton, two key influences. Mary spent three years in New York [2008-2011] and was summoned back to accompany Hampton in 2017 for his 85th birthday concert; hence the affinity.

He’s also enamoured of the writing of Gil Evans, Bill Holman and Thad Jones, and it is to the latter and his many recording with the band he co-led with drummer Mel Lewis that one is drawn when listening to this music. There’s certainly a similarly fine-tuned command of the medium with proper section understanding, good melodic lines and clear openings for his soloists, among whom one must rank Mary himself, a facile improviser in the Kenny Dorham-Lee Morgan mould.

His bandmates handle everything he throws at them with commendable professionalism and no small enthusiasm. Or swing. His ‘One for Slide’ is worth pinpointing – sonorous brass chords to open, interesting broken figures, a fast-moving sax-chorus, Evans-like interjections, before more brass, crisp piano, Joussein soloing in JJJ/Hampton fashion at length, Sauzay following on tenor, fruity brass figures in support, more piano. Eight minutes plus – all big band life is here, and much the same goes for all these charts, each crowded with incident, with superb musicianship and strong soloists, US trombonist Edwards notable among them. The present-day NYJO would love this.