‘For a wholly original take on big band’s past, present and future, look to Darcy James Argue’ — so says Newsweek’s Seth Colter Walls.

The Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based composer and bandleader has toured nationally and internationally with his 18-piece ensemble, Secret Society, garnering countless awards and nominations and reimagining what a 21st-century big band can sound like. Their long-awaited performance at this year’s Festival – only their second visit to the UK – follows a tremendous Festival concert back in 2010.

Real Enemies, released in the fall of 2016, earned a third consecutive Grammy nomination and has been praised as ‘wildly discursive, twitchily allusive, a work of furious ambition… deeply in tune with our present moment’ by The New York Times’ Nate Chinen.

Proclaimed ‘a mind-blowing example of truly great, era-defining jazz composition, and a contender for album of the year’ by London Jazz News’ John L. Walters, Real Enemies is a 13-chapter exploration of America’s fascination with conspiracy theories and the politics of paranoia.

Duration: 90 minutes without interval