Onyx Brass’s ‘Festmusik’ album (Chandos, 6/21) was an intriguing recital of German works prompted by a collection of letters bequeathed to the group’s tuba player, David Gordon-Shute. This new programme celebrates their 30th anniversary, was recorded in January and was, as trombonist Amos Miller relates in the booklet, long in the making.

The tone is set beautifully by Roxanna Panufnik’s Fanfare for Broadway Tower (2020) for Alan Thomas’s solo trumpet – and bicycle, being designed for him to cycle to this local landmark to play. A remarkably fecund-sounding miniature, complete in itself, it could equally well be the generative up-beat to a much larger work. The smaller works here score the greatest impact, whether Bobbie-Jane Gardner’s quirky Up on the toes (2021), Charlotte Harding’s New York-inspired Rhombus (2020) or Errollyn Wallen’s elegiac ONYX (2022‑23), partly a tribute to the late film-maker Mike Hodges (1932-2022). Emily Hall’s pair of Rimbaud-inspired pieces make a fine closing diptych, Blackcurrant River (2020) – listed on the composer’s website as Black current river – for full quintet and Eternity for two flugelhorns and horn, a 2020 arrangement of a 2010 part-song.

Onyx Brass wanted short, largely celebratory pieces but Mark-Anthony Turnage’s ONYX30 (2022) is a suite of two fanfares, a chorale and a Blues, though each could be performed separately. Simon Dobson’s recent First Brass Quintet, however, at some 16 minutes in duration, stands out like a sore thumb for its length and having outer movements deriving, respectively, from works by Derek Bourgeois and Malcolm Arnold. The textural diversity of Zoë Martlew’s invigorating Kiss, Kiss (2022), at 7'58" the longest single track, allows this rather fun piece to sustain its length, something I am less convinced occurs in Yshani Perinpanayagam’s disturbing Music for My Stolen Breath, the roots of which lie in a racist attack on her at her workplace, and its aftermath. The performances all sound first-rate, captured by David Lefeber in splendidly rich sound, the acoustic of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Bradshaw Hall ideal.