Along with the Mingus Big Band, Loose Tubes, Jazz Jamaica, WDR, SNJO and JALCO, Manchester outfit Beats & Pieces Big Band are among my favourite big bands.

B&PBB mark a decade together this month with yep ten (Efpi). 

Emerging as students at the Royal Northern College of Music they picked up accolades in Germany early on and soon found themselves following in Loose Tubes’ footsteps by playing Ronnie Scott’s, which is the home of jazz in the UK and which next year celebrates its 60th anniversary.

Traces of north country brass band melancholia and an edgy frisson of squally danger match and fuse and dress down rather than don the tux of the boring old swing bands many of which have dated badly or given up entirely by now. Not these Mancs.