Igor Butman, a neo-bop tenor saxophonist who emerged from behind the Iron Curtain to study at Berklee in 1983, had already made his name in the USSR, performing with high profile US visitors as well as some touring and recording with Grover Washington Jr. Having made a permanent move to New York in 1989, Butman has upped his profile as an ambassador for the jazz tradition in Russia with props from both Wynton Marsalis and Bill Clinton also working to his advantage. This new recording for large orchestra puts a contemporary sheen on the sound of the post-bebop swinging big bands of Thad Jones-Mel Lewis and Oliver Nelson. But there's a twist and that's the focus on traditional Russian melody as a basis for improv. As well as Russian and Ukrainian folk songs (with Juan Tizol's ‘Caravan’ the exception), central to the recording is a big band adaptation of Russian Nationalist composer Rimsky-Korsakov's late-19th century symphonic suite Scheherazade. Arrangements are by Butman's long-term collaborator and experienced composer-arranger Nick Levinovsky for an orchestra of Russian musicians and a handful of special guests from the US including Levinovsky's wife and jazz vocalist Kathy Jenkins who contributes a semi-operatic vocal to the suite. But the arranger Levinovsky turns the folk melodies of the four movements of Scheherazade into conventional straightahead chorus-solo-chorus form and a derivative post-bop language that denies the recording the resources to create fresh meaning out of Rimsky-Korsakov's work, as well as making it less faithful to the original music than it might have been. While contrasting this recording to Ellington/Strayhorn's colourfully inventive The Nutcracker Suite (another homage to a work by a Russian composer) from 1960 might not be entirely fair, it does highlight the limitations of Levinovsky's effort here. While the performances and the arrangements can hardly be faulted for proficiency, unfortunately it comes out sounding like one of those dreaded jazzed up classics.