Mike Gibbs, one of the most important living composers and arrangers working in the jazz and improvised music idiom, pays tribute to the legendary composer/arranger Gil Evans with a twelve-piece ensemble featuring leading musicians from the UK jazz scene, including Julian Siegel and Finn Peters.To mark Evans’s 100th anniversary in 2012 Gibbs adapted the six original arrangements of Gil Evans material on this CD. There’s also a helping of Gibbs originals and works by some of his favourite composers including Carla Bley and Ornette Coleman. The group recorded all the material on the album in just one day and it features an eclectic mix of some of the most important improvisers living in the UK, with each track featuring at least one soloist from the ensemble.Mike Gibbs has worked with legendary artists including Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Joni Mitchell, Whitney Houston, John Schofield and Peter Gabriel in a career that spans four decades. The 76 year old Gibbs according to The Guardian, “still sparks subtly harmonized thrills from a jazz orchestra in ways that few can - much as he did in the 1960s when he first showed the scene just what his unique synthesis of Gil Evans, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen and country-rock could sound like.”Personnel: Mike Gibbs (conductor, arranger, composer), Hans Koller (piano), Julian Siegel (tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet), Finn Peters (alto saxophone, flutes), Lluis Mather (tenor saxophone, clarinets), Percy Pursglove (trumpet), Robbie Robson, Joe Aukland (trumpet), Jim Rattigan (French horn), Mark Nightingale (trombone), Sarah Williams (bass trombone, tuba), Michael Janisch (double bass), Jeff Williams (drums)“Think of the ingredients you look for in a great jazz record - inspired, exploratory improv, the complete reinvention of standards, ear-catching arrangements, sonorities you've never heard before - and this new big band recording from Mike Gibbs delivers them all. By the bucketload.” - The Arts Desk.com