You just don’t get big music like this very often. Which may say something about the bravery of commissioners, the imagination of composers, the vision of promoters. Hedvig Mollestad's recordings grow ever more epic, but the Norwegian state readily supports jazz. Even in the 1980s London Bridge had to be a European commission (from the Amiens jazz festival), and an album version was released on Virgin Venture in 1988.

But it's to the credit of Proper and the Airshaft Trust, as well as producer Jay Aubon, all of whom do so much to keep the Westbrooks’ work visible, that this double CD jazz orchestra and sinfonietta coalition has been ‘reconstituted’ from a later Zurich jazz festival gig.

We currently live in interesting times but the context for this composition is equally extraordinary, as signified by the writer's photo of the Berlin wall from his hotel room prior to its deconstruction in 1989. In the same year the Wenceslas Square demos led to the Czech republic's first democratic elections and within a year the Soviet Union had voted to dissolve itself.

And through it all the Westbrooks, travelling across Europe with the Trio and Rossini band somehow distilled this Zeitgeist. Kate Westbrook's vocalisation of texts, from Goethe to Sassoon and not without irony the children's song of the title, moves from intimacy and innocence, to biting songspiel and swooning balladry, constantly complemented by Wakeman and Biscoe, although it's Paul Nieman's trombone and electronics, groined and groaning, that catch the ear.

Will we hear the likes of such composition again? Our times surely deserve it.