The North Texas Wind Symphony are nothing if not industrious, with a recording history going back to the late 1980s. Director Eugene Migliaro Corporon consistently draws playing of the highest quality from the band, as I noted in my review of a clutch of their recordings last year (4/17), and this new pair carry on where they left off. ‘Contact’ focuses on concertante works, the band partnering percussion virtuoso Mark Ford (and friends). Pick of the crop is Jennifer Higdon’s fabulous Grammy Award-winning Percussion Concerto (2004 05), given here in its popular 2008 wind band arrangement. Ford proves more than equal to its demands in a driving performance of rhythmic precision and considerable poetry. He is partnered by the marimba legend Keiko Abe in the latter’s arrangement of her Prism Rhapsody II (1996, for single instrument and orchestra) for two marimbas and wind band. This appears to be a recording of its 2003 premiere.

Ford’s own Stubernic Fantasy (2012) for three players at one marimba – no doubt fun to watch – makes a breezy opener but attempts no expressive profundity. Neither does Daniel McCarthy’s Chamber Symphony No 1 (1993), primarily inspired by the landscape of Michigan. ‘Taylor Made’ by chance features second and third symphonies by other hands, neither leaving a lasting impression. Indeed, the Slavyanskaya Symphony (1950) of Boris Kozhevnikov (1906-85), a contemporary of Shostakovich, strikes me as a Soviet-Realist dance suite of the dullest type, however much it may be fun to play. Donald Grantham’s After Hafiz (1993) is not so much a symphony, either, as a lyric triptych inspired by three of the 14th-century Persian writer’s poems.

‘Taylor Made’ is rather mixed, to be honest. David Conte’s A Copland Portrait (1999) is pleasant but unexceptional; James Stephenson’s Three Bones Concerto for trombone trio (2013) fun but lightweight. The slickest, most attractive works are Moth (2013) by the California-born Viet Cuong (b1990; yes, he has a brother named Nam) and Paul Dooley’s Mavericks (2016). Both are virtuoso, Moth a vibrant, compelling tone poem about dark and light, Mavericks descriptive of the giant winter surf waves of northern California. GIA’s sound, as before, is first-rate.