Fervour: Taking Flight

Bandcamp

Best known north of the Border as a young but noteworthy member of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, London-based, Edinburgh-born trumpeter Sean Gibbs leads his quintet, Fervour, through this zesty album. They take the bouncy opening title, Go On Then, pretty literally, grabbing the ball and running with it, as Gibbs shifts through snappy riffing and shifting tempi to a limber solo, with incisive piano from Andy Bunting and waspish guitar lines from Ben Lee. Gibbs’s mute trumpet rasps gallusly amid the Dixieland swagger of What’s the Rush, over Nick Jurd’s stealthily creeping double bass, and his flugelhorn lingers warmly in the ballad Redemption. The title track sees the band again in muscular form, with Gibbs in brisk exchange with drummer Euan Palmer, and there’s an irresistible shuffle to the possibly Wodehouse-inspired Cheer

Up Old Bean. They close with a lovely slow blues – a solemnly paced New Orleans benediction with Gibbs’s trumpet yelping in loquaciously wahwah form.