“I NEVER considered that I wouldn’t play piano or trumpet or lead a band,” Laura Jurd asserts. That, she believes, was due to the dynamism of her teachers, remarkable women who, from the age of five onwards, gave her the confidence and self-belief to achieve.

Now in her twenties, she went on to study classical piano as a teenager, with Stravinsky, Bach, Britten and Tippett all making a profound impact, while Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Charlie Mingus, Duke Ellington and Keith Jarrett were an influence from the US jazz lineage.

Her track record for one so young is hugely impressive. A regular performer in Britain and Europe, she leads the 2017 Mercury-nominated band Dinosaur and is a prolific composer who’s equally at home writing for contemporary chamber groups and orchestras as she is writing for jazz ensemble and improvising musicians.