The so-called Spike ensembles come in many sizes: the 22-piece Spike Orchestra, the six-piece Spiketet and the avant-improv duo of the composers and originators of the project: the trumpeter Sam Eastmond and vocalist Nikki Franklin. The track titles reflect the programmatic approach. Each one a chapter in a tragic tale centred on the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The arranger Eastmond's inventively effective mix of avant contemporary and more rootsy styles turns out to be a passionately eclectic musical reflection on its subject. With an injection of some Ellingtonian swing, brass voicing evoking Gil Evans' flamenco-ish passages from Sketches of Spain, elements from Brecht-ian Weimar cabaret, bop, free improv with Nikki Franklin's non-verbal, avant-improv vocals, through to downtown New York klezmer, this is an entirely positive form of commemoration that seems to celebrate the fiery resilience and humanity of the ghetto uprising rather than focus on heavier, more dour aspects – the expected musical response to such a catastrophic historical event. But it's all the better for it.