Terry Pack’s prog apprenticeship with The Enid and session work with varios pop/rock figures from Steve Hackett to Sam Fox only cohered into his present role as a substantial Sussex jazzman in 1999, just after turning 40. This midlife move has latterly reembraced prog expansiveness, as well as most of the Sussex jazz scene, first with The Cloggz’ roistering carnival noir then, as sole leader, Trees’ shifting community of about 50 members. Where the latter’s debut Heart of Oak (2017) conjured recognisable Downland locations, Into The Woods begins with the steamy polyrhythmic pulse and massed brass of ‘Dakar’, coloured by Beccy Rork’s soprano sax and Tom Phelan’s spiritual jazz synths. Coltrane’s Africa/Brass partly inspires ‘S/Pulse’, while another composite piece, ‘Muito Obrigado/Seven Sisters’ switches from rasping funk to woodwind swirls; the bass-led groove of ‘Palimpsest 2019’ even quotes ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’. Best, though, are moments of pastoral prettiness: ‘No Wind (It Will Get Up Soon)’, gently reflective then brightly uplifting over a Latin rhythm, and ‘The Cedars’, both mournful and gently accepting. As with the atmospheric title track, maybe the Sussex Weald’s ancient woodland is visited here. Pack leaves generous space for his local platoons to improvise and, perhaps as a residue of his rock days, the elaborate compositions are mostly punchy and propulsive. If less would inevitably be more at times, pseudo-classical stiffness is largely avoided.