CD of the Week

IMPRESSED VOL 2 WITH GILLES PETERSON:

When presenter/DJ Gilles Peterson issued Impressed Vol 1, his compilation of British jazz from the Swingin' Sixties, he could hardly have anticipated the universal thumbs up it got, or that Univeral would ask him to compile volume 2. But that's what happened, and this latest glimpse of an overlooked world emphasises the extraordinary variety, quality and questing vitality of British jazz in the Beatles era.

By any standards it's a memorable collection. Indo-jazz fusion sits with straight-ahead jazz, settings of poems by Yeats, Joyce and Edward Lear contrast with creative responses to Dylan Thomas, small groups jostle with innovative big bands. The composer/arranger Neil Ardley, for example, a talent as personal as America's rather different Gil Evans, is represented by tracks from his outstanding New Jazz Orchestra and Symphony of Amaranths albums, and the marvellous Mike Westbrook (pictured right) with an inspired performance from his Metropolis LP.

Pianist Michael Garrick's stellar sextet with Don Rendell, Tony Coe, Joe Harriott and Ian Carr is there, visiting Ellingtonian Paul Gonsalves jousts with fellow tenors and Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott, Goan guitarist Amancio D'Silva grooves with fellow spirit and great multi-instrumentalist Alan Branscombe, and tenor Bobby Wellins is memorable on Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood. And there are talents like Harold McNair, Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, John Taylor, Malcolm Griffiths and others to savour. Universal have just reissued five of the rare albums featured, with five more to come later this year. - Ray Comiskey