Trumpeter David Weiss' current projects include the excellent Cookers, which features serious 1970s era musicians like Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, George Cables, Cecil McBee and Billy Hart, who never received the acclaim they deserved at the time. Up next is a 12-piece mini big band called Endangered Species playing the music of Wayne Shorter, with a CD due later this year. Point of Departure was his 2008 venture aimed at continuing unfinished jazz concepts from the late-1960s, with particular reference to the second great Miles Davis Quintet. Venture Inward is basically the studio version of the band's two live sets at the Jazz Standard, released as, first, Snuck In and, later, Snuck Out. Unusually, this was recorded the day before the live sessions. There are lengthy solos by every member of the group, with JD Allen's the most enthralling, on extended versions of some of the era's most innovative compositions, kicking off with Herbie Hancock's inspirational ‘I Have a Dream’, extracts from the melody of which keep cropping up throughout the album. Tony Williams' ‘Black Comedy’ is here, too, plus a couple by Andrew Hill (the title track and ‘Pax’) and two by an almost totally forgotten trumpeter-composer Charles Moore from an absolutely brilliant Detroit band that Frank Wolff reluctantly recorded for Blue Note in 1968 and 69, telling them “You call this jazz?” – Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet.