While Stan Getz was in Denmark at the start of 1977, he recorded two live albums’ worth of material at the Club Montmartre, with the line-up included here (in which NHØP replaced the touring quartet’s regular bassist Mike Richmond). But while the band was in town, Steeplechase producer Nils Winther also took them into a studio to make a rather different set of recordings.

There was not quite enough for an album, so the material has lain unissued for the best part of half a century. But now it’s finally available, with alternate takes (and some pieces from Montmartre) making up the numbers, and in the process giving an insight to the band’s subtle refinements in arriving at what they thought at the time to be an ‘issuable’ version.

A case in point is ‘Blue Serge’, where Brackeen’s central solo on the first take is looser and more exploratory, but a less perfect fit with Getz’s romantic statement of the ballad theme. Yet her variety of touch (on grand piano here, not the electric instrument), her use of the pedal, and her dynamics, let alone NHØP’s telepathic instinct for the right bass note, make this alternate version a valuable document.

Equally fascinating are the two extra versions of ‘Canção do Sal’, with Brackeen’s electric piano fitting straight into the Brazilian rhythm laid down by Hart and NHØP, and giving Getz the space to float over everything as he had in his 1960s bossa nova work. They were playing this piece regularly at the Montmartre, so the CD versions are akin to eavesdropping on the way they played the piece live, differently each time. Kenny Wheeler fans will be delighted by the quartet’s exploratory version of his composition ‘Quiso’, while all of us lucky enough to have heard Getz live will wallow in the ravishing ballad playing on ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ and (drawn from his unissued Montmartre recordings) ‘I Remember Clifford’.