" data-original-title="" title="">Aaron Irwin is a very ambitious composer and on his latest, A Room Forever, shows how to plumb emotional depths with subtlety and grace.

The inspiration for this music is the short stories by Breece Dexter John Pancake, sometimes written Breece D'J Pancake, the spelling of which comes from a typo in the Atlantic Magazine. Pancake lived to be only twenty- six and died by his own hand; his stories focus on his native West Virginia and its people, highly regarded posthumously for stories which can be sampled here.

However, the record liner itself is completely devoid of any of these connections and, although the bell cannot be unrung, the music does stand on its own, without making any overt references to the Appalachia of the stories. The twelve tracks share the titles of Pancake's twelve stories, each being a very carefully constructed vignette that manages to hide Irwin's expertise. The balance between the composed and improvised is finely wrought, making the line between them virtually invisible, with the only giveaway being larger structure which is uses the familiar recapitulation.

The band is drummerless, and indeed drums would have been intrusive: Irwin on clarinet, trombonist