Had Charles Darwin used musical instruments to back up his theory of evolution, he may well have looked to the trumpet for evidence. From marching bands to mariachi music or from classical performance to jazz, the trumpet has demonstrated an inbuilt capacity to adapt to (and evolve in) a variety of different contexts. As suggested by the title of this disc of recent music for trumpet or clarinet with piano accompaniment, it’s not so much the different contexts that are interesting but rather the ways in which these areas overlap and interconnect.

Ashley John Long’s episodic Mondestrunken fuses jazz improvisation with contemporary classical elements, while quartal harmonies and whole-tone scales strive for supremacy in Deborah Pritchard’s impressive Yellow-Red-Blue. Oscar Whight’s trumpet inhabits a series of contrasting moods in Gary Carpenter’s five-movement Speakeasy. Inspired by the names of cocktails, Whight’s trumpet is assertive and confident in ‘Boulevardier’ and ‘Manhattan’ while withdrawn and introspective in ‘Agro Dolce’ and ‘Vesper’. A similar fragility is also brought to the surface in David John Roche’s Heartbreak. An altogether warmer glow is evident in Martin Butler’s Two Winter Journeys – one of the highlights on this recording – partly achieved through Whight’s softer-sounding flugelhorn. The spirit of Kenny Wheeler is never far away.

Whight’s trumpet is not the only instrument on display, however. Zeynep Özsuca gives an admirable account of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s True Life Stories for solo piano. These five short meditations contain some of Turnage’s most poignant and personal moments, while the same composer’s Four Pieces for clarinet and piano contrast quieter and more introverted episodes with quirkier, livelier ones, all vividly captured by Michael Whight on clarinet.