The Scottish trumpeter and composer Colin Steele has been both an exponent of warmly songlike jazz playing and vivacious jazz-inflected Celtic original themes over the years, but embouchure trouble was about to end his playing career until classical trumpeter Mark O’Keefe’s inspired advice saved it in 2015. Even in the Darkest Places is the result, seven new Steele themes played by a superb quintet including saxophonist Michael Buckley, with the composer’s folk-jazz alter ego Dave Milligan on piano. The three-part Down to the Wire catches Steele’s composing essence in its sequence of plaintive soprano sax entreaties, echoed by Milligan, a warmly jigging horn dance with a soft, enveloping melody, and then a hurtling, bass-walking Scottish bop-blues. The timely Independence Song neatly meshes a Celtic melody and a South African chime to Milligan’s piano sound, and the mellow theme of There Are Angels hauntingly conveys Steele’s thanks to the people who helped him back to the bandstand. It’s an invitingly lyrical jazz set with a very heartening backstory.
