“Hidden Vision must be Martin Speake’s finest recording”

Acclaimed British altoist Martin Speake’s new big band came together in October 2025 at Lady Eleanor Holles School for its first-ever session. The resulting album, Hidden Vision, features 18 handpicked players from the UK and beyond, including renowned Czech pianist Emil Viklický and a stellar brass section led by Louis Dowdeswell and Mark Nightingale. The 8 tracks on Hidden Vision highlight various chapters from Speake’s esteemed career, arranged by 24-year- old saxophonist and arranger Charlie Rees, winner of the 2025 Eddie Harvey Jazz Arranger Award.

Although Speake was the London Jazz Orchestra's lead alto saxophonist for nearly two decades, only two big band arrangements of his music (by the late pianist Pete Saberton) previously existed. He suggested the idea of developing more of his music for big band in a 2021 conversation with Charlie Rees, then his student at the Royal Academy of Music. Already a practised arranger at the time and frustrated by limited opportunities to further develop his large ensemble writing as an undergraduate, Rees seized on the opportunity.

Over the following years, the new arrangements by Rees of Speake's music were regularly performed by LJO. Eventually, in 2024, Speake began the monumental task of organising a larger-scale project that would feature musicians of his choosing. Having by then graduated from RAM, Rees set to work revising his LJO arrangements and curated a fresh program of music selected from Speake’s impressive and diverse discography – available now to listeners on Hidden Vision.