Five stars should be awarded instantly to Andrew Baker for the musicological research and reconstruction of this music. Paul Whiteman was an American bandleader active during the 1920s and early ‘30s. His remit was to make jazz suitable for a white, middle-class audience: not so much to straighten it out as to dress it in a white tux and sweep it into an upmarket ballroom. His greatest hit was the piece he commissioned from Tin-Pan Alley songwriter George Gershwin, titled Rhapsody in Blue. 

Whiteman also asked more ‘legit’ composers to write for jazz orchestra in quasi-symphonic style, and one was Leo Sowerby (1895-1968). Sowerby was not a jazzman; he came from a church background, and his later music usually involves choir and organ. He wrote five concertante works for organ and orchestra between 1926 and 1951.

It is clear from these jazz ensemble pieces that the main attraction for Sowerby was in the sonorities he could explore. Trombone glissandi appear in both pieces, especially at the opening of the Symphony for Jazz Orchestra. A punchy baritone sax plays a...