Sholto Byrnes: Talking Jazz

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Forty years ago, a young British pianist called Stan Tracey was lying in bed, thinking of themes for the new album he'd been asked to record with his quartet, when Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood came into his mind. Having recently heard a production of the play in New York, Tracey, then the house pianist at Ronnie Scott's, said he'd been 'quite knocked out' by it.

Taken by the idea, he got out of bed and settled down to re- reading Thomas's original script, playing the recording he had of the original performance at the same time and noting down ideas. 'By the time I'd got to the end of the play,' Tracey later wrote, 'I'd got all the ideas worked out, and just went on …