Best and top for big band in 2020 is Tenacity by Django Bates. A big band studio album recorded in Sweden, the release of which chimed with the composer's sixtieth birthday and the centenary of his childhood hero Charlie Parker. A wonderful freewheeling affair that anyone into big band jazz will have to hear. With Django there is always a sense of mischief, intense, anarchic detail and a puckish joie de vivre combined with an almost Spike Milligan sense of humour. A whole collision of things are going on with alongside him his acclaimed Beloved trio and for extra beef the Norbotten big band. The material is at once very familiar to Charlie Parker fans but at the same time full of signature Bates touches in the arranging that has the atmosphere of a raucous circus as much as a smoky 1940s jazz club and this is combined in terms of material with some of Django's fantastic writing including the beautiful 'Study of Touch'. Reasons to be cheerful? At least 60 or so.

marlbank albums of the year will be published on Thursday 31 December round midnight