I first heard this local ensemble and their tidy versions of swing classics a year or so ago, their youthful enthusiasm pleasingly evident on their debut CD, Now comes this bravura release, combining their usual big-ish band line-up with the City String Ensemble, this augmented entity morphing into the 30-piece DFTC Concert Orchestra, A potential competitor to the John Wilson Orchestra? Perhaps.

Conductor Mike Paul-Smith's notes tell the tale well, emphasising his abiding desire to replicate the sound of the great orchestras resident at Hollywood's Capitol Studios in the 1950s and 1960s, the era of Nelson Riddle et al, Taking a series of hit songs of the time, we first hear ‘The Man That Got Away’ sung lustily by band regular Katie Birtill, the arrangement transcribed from a Nancy Wilson live recording. It's bright, brash and lovingly done, The same goes for the remainder of these hardy annuals; most tracks using orchestral transcriptions taken from the originals, and featuring a vocal, either by Birtill or the hearty¬voiced Callum Gillies or Hannah Coleman, While it's gratifying to be reminded of these standards and to hear them presented in suitably bright, show-biz fashion, the musicianship precise and swinging, there is, in all truth, little here for the hard-core jazz enthusiast, The Cold Stores, by the way, is their preferred recording studio.