This programmatic set of eight original compositions by Maria Schneider, evoking her childhood and early adolescent memories of the middle west, is a work that is both profound and memorable. Such abstract reminiscences of a perhaps idealised mid-western past have emerged in the work of Marc Johnson with his Bass Desires group and has been a feature of the guitarist Bill Frisell's work, to name just two in jazz, but seldom have these feelings been translated over such a broad canvas to such aesthetically and emotionally compelling effect. Of course, all programmatic music comes with a caveat in that it cannot be a direct communication of a composer's feelings, rather it's about how she or he make sense of those feelings, and how they transform emotion into art. On that basis, this album is surely a masterpiece of contemporary jazz composition and arranging, but within jazz there is always the knotty problem of integrating soloist into ensemble. How can you be sure that the soloist is reflecting the emotions that gave rise to the composition itself and thus retain its emotional unity? It is at these moments that in effect, the composer/arranger cedes the emotional destiny of their work to the spontaneous creation of others. Fortunately, Schneider's soloists have a long history with the band and remain loyal to her intent, thus contributing to the overall unity of the album. Schneider, who delights in breaking open the rigid structure of cyclical forms in jazz with writing that explores theme, variation, development and recapitulation is also a master of shifting tonal densities – one glance at the doubles the reed section have to contend with, plus a brass section all doubling on flugel horns, means some of the tone colours she dreams up are breathtaking. The one reason why this album does not quite merit five stars is the ‘Toshiko Akyoshi effect’ whereby stunning orchestration is broken open by an overlong solo interlude, and even though remaining loyal to the composer's intent, go on a bit too long so that you loose a sense of where you have come from or where you are going, as in ‘Arbiters of Evolution’, for example. This is a problem contemporary writing for a large ensemble has not entirely resolved, not even at the hands of a true master like Schneider.