Here's A Song For You is a beautiful piece of work. It mixes standards like ‘Here Come De Honey Man’ from Porgy and Bess and Fats Waller's ‘Jitterbug Waltz’ with more contemporary material like Nick Drake's ‘River Man’ and Tom Waits’ ‘Soldier's Things’ and does so seamlessly. Joni Mitchell's ‘Blue’ in a simple, uncluttered arrangement is followed by a more obviously big band version of Cole Porter's ‘So In Love’ and a portentous, nocturnal take on Randy Newman's ‘I Think It's Going To Rain Today’ is succeeded by Fats Waller's delightful ‘Jitterbug Waltz’. The playing from musicians like Claus Stötter on the wordless ‘Some Shadows’ and Christof Lauer on Gershwin's ‘Here Come De Honeyman’ is fabulous but it's the way Winstone combines with the orchestra and with Gibbs’ arrangements that truly impresses. It's been ten years since Gibbs’ last album Nonsequence – too bloody long but well worth the wait.

This album has been a long time coming. What's kept you?

Well, we began working on it back in 2003 for Colin Towns’ Provocateur label. Colin has a vision for Provocateur and if it wasn't right for it, that's fine. This just wasn't how he wanted to present Norma.

I gather Colin was happy for you to take the tapes that were finished.

Colin was very generous but when we approached the NDR, they said, ‘Yes, but the tapes aren't digital.’ So, we had the luxury of recording all over again. It was ready last year but Issie Barrett (Fuzzy Moon) had problems getting licensing for some tracks. In fact, with ‘You Go To My Head’, four publishing companies each claimed 50 per cent ownership. Issie couldn't put it out unless she solved that and there were other problems. The Tom Waits song, ‘A Soldier's Things’, he wanted to hear it first but wasn't available for three months to OK the version we'd done.

What was Norma Winstone like to work with?

Norma's got chops, so you don't hear how difficult it is. With ‘Jitterbug Waltz’, it really is difficult keeping the time as there's a lot of words in a short space of time but Norma is amazing. On the end of ‘Caravan’, I wrote something in the studio and she learnt it in about five minutes.

Drummer Mark Mondesir is also very impressive on the record.

I really enjoy him. On the ‘Some Shadows’ piece he overdubbed a shaker for me. I mean he knew the piece already because he'd played drums but it really coalesced some of the rhythms of the tune. I'd read that Gil Evans had used Elvin Jones for that function some times. He just played one of these shakers and it just puts a solid thread through the rhythm feel and Mark did that for me in just one take.

It's your 75th in September. What are your plans for 2012?

They tell me that I'm composer in residence at NDR and I'm doing a concert at Kings Place with the Hans Koller Ensemble in March. We'll be doing some of my music but also some pieces by Gil Evans. These are original Gil scribbles. Some of them are neat but some of them are like lead sheets and arrows and things but they're things that haven't been played that much. I'm doing ‘Las Vegas Tango’ and ‘St Louis Blues’ and I'm going to try ‘Spring Is Here’ from the album with Miles at Carnegie Hall, which isn't often attempted. We were going to do that set for the LJF last year at the Pizza Express but they gave us two nights and then cut it to one which made it really difficult. That's why we had to pull out. John Cumming, [LJF director] was peripherally involved and that's when John said, ‘Let's do something next year,’ because I could tie it in with my birthday.