In the 1960s, Michael Garrick was one of the first British musicians to combine jazz and choral music with his much-fêted Jazz Praises and even more successful Mr Smith's Apocalypse. An affinity with poetry and voice has always lain at the centre of his art. Here, he has provided a musical setting for the words of a young Second World War, military nurse, Eva Travers, that is richly complex and Ellingtonian and which never sounds remotely awkward or clumsy – a trap into which other, similar projects often fall. Some beautifully lyrical and swinging jazz sits easily with some fine, sensitive writing for strings and voice that suits its libretto, a tribute to those in the air and those on the ground whose heroism helped defeat National Socialism. As it notes, we are forever in their debt. This may not be the ‘jazz equivalent’ of Britten's War Requiem. In many ways, its scope and scale are all the more personal and more poignant for it. The sound is at times rather brash but, otherwise, this is a very welcome addition to Garrick's already astonishing catalogue.