When Byron Wallen won the Innovation category of last year's BBC Jazz Awards, it wasn't a token gesture - he'd already earned his stripes with many exciting projects: the Tarot Suite; the quartet Indigo, with Tony Kofi; and his genre-busting duos with Cleveland Watkiss. Now Wallen has come up with yet another winner, a six-piece jazz "orchestra" with a big sound, and an expansive repertoire inspired by the work of poet Langston Hughes. Wallen's trick is to keep the rhythm section mean and lean - Tom Skinner on drums and Larry Bartley on bass - while making the most of his front line: Tony Kofi (baritone sax), Trevor Mires (trombone) and Finn Peters (flute), alongside his own flugelhorn.

Compositions such as Symphonic Language and Crane on the Nest show his writing at its most effective - widely spaced chords for the ensemble, with dramatic use of drums and bass, and free-flowing solos. Having established a particular set of tone colours there's freedom to improvise within the framework of Wallen's clever scores.

In Ask Your Mama, Wallen reads out Hughes's poem, which asks: "What happens to a dream deferred?" The band provides a musical answer. Wallen's speaking voice is classless and clear, keeping his combination of poetry and jazz away from tweeness or incoherent hipness. The Big Sea and Essence of an Emotion are tone poems, with literary starting points. They feature little or no improvisation, but create a rich sound that's rooted in the jazz tradition.

An entertaining slow blues gives Mires a chance to shine on trombone; Bartley has a long feature on Crane on the Nest; and Skinner is his customary unpredictable and exuberant self on the swaggering Harlem funk of Which Is I. But all the musicians sound great within Wallen's ingenious charts. The band closes with Not Yet Returning, another tone poem, short and bittersweet.