Forever Lasting Planet Arts*****

Recorded live in Tokyo last November, the VJO’s new album is the musical equivalent of a triple play: accomplished writing and performances, demanding, diverse charts and an orchestra packed with high calibre soloists. To that add a fourth: the lift that happens when a big band is on song in front of a simpatico audience.

Over three nights 38 separate compositions were recorded, with no alternate takes, in a stunning demonstration of the band’s range. Of these, 13 were picked for release, including eight arrangements by the late Thad Jones (six of his originals and two standards), reflecting the fact that he was the VJO’s first major writer in its original incarnation as the Thad Jones- Mel Lewis orchestra.

The other five pieces, apart from tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer's arrangement of Herbie Hancock's One Finger Snap, come from what VJO director and lead trombone John Mosca calls the "danger zones" of Jim McNeely and Bob Brookmeyer.

The chosen few feature some well-crafted swingers and lyrical ballad-writing by Jones, including Central Park North, a mix of funk, ballad and blues with great work by Scott Wendholt (flügelhorn), Terell Stafford (trumpet) and Billy Drewes (soprano), and his attractive Don't Ever Leave Meand Forever Lasting. The first has fine solos by Dick Oatts (flute) and Stafford, the second features Wendholt and, all too briefly, Gary Smulyan on baritone.

Jones also wrote the excellent arrangements of the standards I Love Youand All of Me. And an old piece of his, based on the ever-useful harmonies of I Got Rhythm,gives Mosca, Stafford, Ralph Lalama (tenor), Michael Weiss (piano), David Wong (bass) and John Riley (drums) a chance to shine.

Brookmeyer lives up to Mosca's "danger zone" description with Nasty Dance, whose weirdly sinister colours and harmonic demands are unlike anything expected from a standard big band instrumentation. Tenor saxophonist Walt Weiskopf insouciantly solos over the cerebral chaos as if it were no more difficult than a set of venerable Rhythmchanges.

Amid the superb orchestral writing, perhaps Jim McNeely's work is the most striking. It's especially true of the wealth of detail and imaginative variation he packs into Extra Credit,with solos by Weiskopf, Luis Bonilla (trombone), Weiss and an uncredited Wendholt, and the seductive Hardly Ever, with Wendholt and Oatts again outstanding. see PlanetArts.org