The Green Seagull, a complex jazz suite composed and arranged by Oxford-born Tommy Evans, began with gentle figures from the keyboard, picked up by bass before three vocalists came in with a melody that was to reappear throughout.

Subtitled Loss, this was the first of ten sections mapping in music the life of Evan’s uncle who, judging from the titles, has had a rich and varied life. This variety, its passions, hopes and humour, are all portrayed in music that draws on the full range of the jazz canon and beyond and it was played by a band that had the often taxing score fully under their control.

As a first commision by a remarkably young musician the work showed both great imaginative force in the writing and also individuality in the arrangements. The use of three vocalists with a medium- size band is unusual, and by often giving them wordless lines of closely harmonised open-phrased melody that contrasted sharply with the stabs and thrusts from the saxes and trumpets, Evans was able to give the music a new dimension, reflecting perhaps the inner life contrasted with outer events.

The arrangements also moved the centre of attention around the band, thus playing on the strengths of individual soloists and making rapid shifts of dynamic and emotion. Cardboard Box, on a period of homelessness, is framed by a beautifully sombre song while the next section about a car accident ends with a storming post-Coltrane sax solo. In the second half of the piece Evans has sections in complex rhythms, introducing a sense of the unfamiliar and reflecting a change in his uncle’s life and attitudes. On the other hand Early Learning Centre on being a grandparent uses light humorous exchanges between pairs of musicians for the interplay between generations.

The Green Seagull, commissioned by the Marsden Jazz Festival and sponsored by PRS and Jazz Services among others, was not just a hugely enjoyable piece of music but also a remarkable achievement for a first extended piece from someone not long out of university.