The three most powerful gigs of 2019 were all at this year's London Jazz Festival, beginning with veteran British bassist Barry Guy’s Purcell Room concert The Blue Shroud, a musical reflection on Picasso’s great anti-fascist mural Guernica.

At the UN in 2003, a blue curtain was hung over the tapestry reproduction of the painting while US Secretary of State Colin Powell outlined the US and British invasion of Iraq. Guy’s 71-minute contemplation was marked by his 14-piece orchestra radiating a hymnal melodic beauty and moments of rapture, horror and defiance.

Percy Pursglove’s haunting, breathy opening trumpet chorus, Maya Homberger’s rhapsodic violin, the truculent drums of Lucas Niggli and Ramon Lopez and Agusti Fernandez’s resonant piano all gave sonic reality to Picasso’s warscape so that sound and image held the same urgent truth.