Following a number of releases (including the 2018 cross-genre anthology ‘Hidden Gems’ and Hans Abrahamsen’s Walden – Winter & Winter, 11/13), Calefax is pre eminent among reed quintets, with ‘An American Rhapsody’ surveying a typically wide variety of music from the past century.

Not even its devotees can have imagined Gershwin’s trailblazing masterpiece so envisaged but Raaf Hekkema’s arrangement is nothing if not idiomatic, not least the degree to which the piano part has been sublimated into the overall texture, a failure to up the emotional ante at climaxes being the only drawback. Equally effective are the latter two of Harry Burleigh’s appealing miniatures, originally for violin and piano, but the highlight here is surely Barber’s adept evoking of ‘regional American idioms’ whose origins for solo piano are barely even hinted at in a transformation by Jelte Althuis that proves as characterful as it is understated. His arrangement of the first two movements (in reverse order) from Florence Price’s main work for piano is hardly less expert in its bringing out the nostalgic fervency of this music.

The other half-dozen pieces doubtless enliven Calefax recitals. With a little help from Eric Dolphy, Billie Holiday’s evergreen fully exudes real pathos, then two staples from the Duke Ellington playbook are no less attuned to their fusing of formal precision with slow-burning eloquence. The atmospheric take on an ‘almost classic’ by Stevie Wonder precedes Syrian-born Kinan Azmeh’s affecting paean to harmony (social and musical) arising from discord, the disarming strains of Moondog’s eulogy to his adopted city rounding off this collection.

Recorded with spacious immediacy and informatively annotated by Hekkema, this is a release to be savoured in full or enjoyed in part; an impressive demonstration of Calefax’s range of sympathies across repertoire that this questing ensemble has succeeded in making its own.