It’s disconcerting at first to hear the children’s voices which define this album, a sound associated with the saccharine and amateurish; childish things we put away. Trombonist and composer Clarkson combines four children’s choirs with adult singer Fini Bearman and musicians including Laura Jurd and Mark Lockheart to argue “a passionate conviction that we should take childhood and the voices of children deeply seriously”.

It’s a rare attempt to combine a musician’s educative and artistic career, rooted in meaningful memories of childhood friendships, and love and respect for the children he’s taught.

The particular quality of the children’s voices is crucial, optimistically high and sweetly strong en masse, emotionally different than jazz singers’ life-weathered grain. These voices of innocence are given reassuring words of experience by Clarkson and Hazel Gould’s lyrics, offering wondrous uplift for trials to come: “the light that sets us free” in ‘With the Power of My Voice’, and “the power to make this world better than it is” in ‘If Only You Knew’.

Clarkson’s biggish band tackle a variety of styles, from shimmying Mariachi brass to Lockheart’s floating, swirling soprano sax solo in the didactic chamber-jazz of ‘Message to a Machine’. ‘It’s a Love Song’ includes a section with Randy Newman’s ornate delicacy and bittersweet Southern romance, while Clarkson plays exceptionally breezy, New Orleans-style trombone. Kenny Wheeler’s ‘Sophie’ inevitably stands out for its self-described “intangible…melody so bright”, explored by Jurd and Clarkson’s inviting, conversational solos and Bearman’s torch-song vocal. The title track gives one last life lesson to its pre-teen performers, in a likeably idealistic, melodic record.