Reasonable question: where are the new British male jazz singers these days?

Well answer, should it be needed, for this week anyway is at Pizza Express Jazz Club.

First up it’s Alexander Stewart, the Mancunian crooner who manages to make even Morrissey a little bit less miserable not to mention swing although Moz might have a thing or two to say about the more meat-laded pizzas on the club menu.

Then on Wednesday and Thursday it’s sharp suited Anthony Strong. If the title of chief contender to Jamie Cullum in the classic jazz singer crooner stakes actually existed, singer-pianist Anthony Strong would fill the role perfectly.

On his latest album On A Clear Day, Strong is accompanied by Cullum’s former drummer Sebastiaan De Krom and Empirical’s Tom Farmer on bass (last heard in the Pizza with Australian up-and-coming singer Sarah McKenzie) plus a big band stocked with well known players plucked from the modern mainstream scene whose ranks include flautist Gareth Lockrane and saxist Nigel Hitchcock.

A big improvement on 2013’s overly mannered Stepping Out. Strong’s voice has matured more into his own style and rather than sounding like a younger, more bashful Cullum as he did unavoidably on the earlier album that’s not so much the case here. His voice is a little higher than Cullum’s with a different timbre and there is a confidence here that translates live too.

The Croydon born 30-year-old is also a fine piano player although that side of his musicianship is overshadowed on the new album by the emphasis on vocals. This new album was co-produced by Curtis Schwartz, known for his work with Stacey Kent, and is bookended by the Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner song ‘On A Clear Day’, first performed by another Cullum, actor/singer John Cullum in the mid-1960s, and Strong’s co-written song with Guy Mathers, ‘The Outgoing Admininstration.’ The big band sounds like it is an old fashioned sometimes swaggering unit of some power and it is even more retro in the arranging than the style favoured on the big band tracks of Joe Stilgoe’s new album. But there are some lighter touches in the set-pieces and the odd flourish or two, with for instance a little quotation from George Shearing’s ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ sewn into the rip roaring lining of ‘Whatever Lola Wants’ adding a touch of magic.

Tickets here