In Geneva where he has been resident the past two decades, John Aram is a well-regarded jazz trombonist and composer (his CV includes numerous TV and film music projects as well) but he's a relatively unknown quantity in the UK from where he originally hails. Nottingham to be precise is his hometown and that's the backdrop for novelist Alan Sillitoe's original screenplay for Karel Reisz' social realist Brit film classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning which is the source for Aram's superbly realized jazz suite. Using fragments of dialogue from the film that was released in 1960, the suite forms an imaginary soundtrack to the narrative, the tracks split up into scenes or moods based on the film. Although he atmospherically reflects the period in terms of jazz, he updates it with a still lyrical yet more contemporary sounding jazz arrangement. The warm authenticity and elegant execution of the project no doubt owes something not only to the classy line up but to Aram's roots and his empathy with Nottingham's working class culture of the period as well as receiving novelist Sillitoe's endorsement and permission to use dialogue samples, even though the writer sadly passed away just before this project was completed. John Dankworth wrote the original soundtrack to the film, and besides the warm echoes here of that score in terms of period and melodic interest, there's a more direct link via the guest appearance of the late lamented Kenny Wheeler on half the 11 tracks, as he appeared in Dankworth's orchestra. There's sensuous soloing too from the likes of saxophonist Andy Scherrer and the Swiss native ECM recording pianist Colin Vallon. If you're a vinyl addict, get your order in early for a limited edition 180g edition released by aesthetically tasteful new boutique label Coup Perdu (Kit Downes' Tricko duo was its previous release) because, as Sillitoe's iconoclastic protagonist Arthur Seaton remarked, “…all the rest is propaganda”.