Simon Purcell’s new album is set to be released on 10 November with a launch gig at the London Jazz Festival on the 16th at the Pizza Express Jazz Club.

Originally mooted for a June release it’s the head of jazz at Trinity-Laban’s first album for bassist Michael Janisch’s prolific label, Whirlwind Recordings. Titled Red Circle there’s a woozy Blue Note distinctly modernistic style to the horns on the pulsing opener ‘Spirit Level’, the pianist joined by trumpeter Chris Batchelor (Pigfoot), and Purcell labelmates Partisans’ reedsman Julian Siegel in the two-prong horn attack, Printmakers bassist Steve Watts, and also from Partisans, Gene Calderazzo, fizzing with a Blakey-esque fire. Liane Carroll guests on the sumptuous bonus track ‘Ithaca’ a Winstone-esque original of Purcell’s, adding to the other compositions of his on the record, this single non-instrumental featuring lyrics by Carroll the singer shadowed obliquely by Siegel on soprano saxophone with an involving piano accompaniment from Purcell. Recorded at the Trinity Laban studio Purcell says: “I just hope that my love of jazz and its traditions of swing and harmonic skulduggery come across and that we evoked the emotional quality that Mike Zwerin called ‘the Cry’.” Simon Purcell, above