" data-original-title="" title="">Geoff Stradling's superb Los Angeles-based StradBand, which swings heartily and with seldom a pause on its radiant and power-laden introductory album, Nimble Digits.

Yes, the album does swing—more than thirty of the L.A. area's most accomplished musicians make sure of that—but if swing were all, the enterprise could easily be dismissed as repetitious and one-dimensional. What sets the session apart and makes it worth hearing and appreciating more than once are Stradling's superlative charts, which span the gamut from blues to ballad, burners to Latin beats, and are never less than bright and pleasurable. Stradling, who started writing big-band charts when he was a high-school student in the mid-1970s, composed all but one song on Nimble Digits (the lovely "Poinciana") and arranged everything.

The StradBand, which has been performing in the Los Angeles area almost since it was formed in 2010, had been unable to record before now because of economics. But after the pandemic struck, Stradling decided it was now or never, launched a KickStarter campaign to help finance the venture, and was able to raise enough money to underwrite the album. Anyone who samples the finished product should be extremely grateful that Stradling and the band persevered, as this is big-band jazz of the highest order, worthy of comparison to such hallowed names as