Listening to this trailer for the newly released largely 17th century-themed The Fifth Century made me think of sitting listening to composer Gavin Bryars’ numinous ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ at the Beckett Happy Days festival. That work massively powerful and still avant garde lives with you.

“Classical,” liturgical, fairly ancient yet modern – his label delighted to have the former Joseph Holbrooke bassist back (above pictured left with the great guitarist-innovator Derek Bailey, and the still hugely cult free-jazz drummer Tony Oxley) – gloss the new release as “a deep yet unsentimental emotional resonance and a patient, contemplative view of time.” Bryars’ first album for ECM “in decades” is dominated by a reading of Thomas Traherne and Bryars’ setting for voice of a cappella Petrarch, a choir and saxophone quartet scaling the heights.