Any fans of the US trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer and arranger, Tom Harrell, will be delighted to hear that, following hot on the heels of her terrific, multi-layered mash-up of alt pop, prog and jazz on Living In Shadows, award-winning vocalist Zoe Gilby is back with an album which sees her appending smart new lyrics to some of Harrell's finest instrumentals. ‘Leap To The Limelight’ Gilby's take on the Harrell tune ‘Little Dancer’, from his 1979 album Look to the Sky with John McNeil, is a celebration of all things terpsichorean, conjuring up images of a ballerina in full flight, with Gilby's lyrics fitting Harrell's vocal-friendly melodic line like a glove. From his 1989 album Sail Away, Harrell's tune ‘Buffalo Wings’ becomes ‘The All Night Diner’, depicting the deep-fried seediness of a nameless eatery, with nods to the Tom Waits songbook. Excerpted from Harrell's excellent 1990 album, Form, the beautiful ‘Scene’ is transformed into ‘Your Dear Heart, My Dear Heart’, with Gilby cleverly interpolating the original title into her lyric.

A further brace of nicely contrasting tunes from Sail Away, the blistering ‘Forget The Past’ (originally titled ‘April Mist’) and the breezy title track (here renamed ‘A Momentary Place Of Peace’), highlight the subtle interplay between Gilby and her musicians. Composed for his wife, Harrell's ‘Angela’ here becomes the decidedly edgier ‘This Is New’, with powerful soloing from both Dennis and Williams. In a 2008 interview with Stanford Magazine, Harrell quoted Don Cherry as saying "words themselves are magic sounds". Listening to Gilby's incantatory vocal on the closing song, ‘Celestial Delight’ (based on Harrell's ‘Aurora‘), you'd have to agree.