If pressed to name a significant figure to emerge in UK jazz this century, I’d personally argue for Yazz Ahmed, the British-Bahraini trumpeter and composer, whose gifts and open-mindedness were evident from the very start of her career. And that career began with Finding My Way Home, first released in 2011, on the tiny Suntara label. The CD has long been near-impossible to find and it’s never been made available on vinyl before, so this reissue – on Night Time Stories – is most welcome.

In order to fit on two sides of vinyl, two tracks – ‘Flip Flop’ and a perky cover of ‘So What’ – have been dropped, and the album resequenced (by Yazz herself). This in fact makes for a more balanced and satisfying listen than the original, strengthening the musical and conceptual journey from the opening ‘Embarkation’ through to the lengthy closer ‘Finding My Way Home’. Listening to it again more than a decade on, it’s clear that not only were Ahmed’s skills as a player (her sound is amber-warm and sensuous, mixing Arabic timbres with more conventional bebop influences, and her phrasing is remarkably poised and confident for one so young), but more importantly as a composer and musical thinker, were already in evidence. She’s developed her art even further since, with La Saboteuse (2017) and Polyhymnia (2019), both of which are also being reissued on vinyl by Night Time Stories.

Those two albums are essential, of course, but there’s something even more arresting about this debut – slightly tentative, perhaps, but proof that Ahmed’s musical intelligence and expansive cosmopolitanism have been at the core of her art from the very beginning.