The California-based modern jazz quintet Kneebody, with singer Theo Bleckmann, was invited to Munich by Kent Nagano to perform songs by Ives in their own way at the Munich Opera Festspiele in 2007. Various members of the group have made these electroacoustic recompositions and it’s apparently the first time the Ives estate has permitted this kind of thing. Gershwin’s songs have been the basis of jazz standards for generations so why not Ives, who drew so much from his own popular culture?

I didn’t know what to expect, but it works. The vocal approach is sympathetic; the harmony is respected, at least as a starting-point; and the humour of some of these songs is exploited. For example, in “Waltz”, which describes Annie Rooney’s wedding day in Ives’s 1890s style, Bleckmann first sings it straight but then the band breaks into a hilariously incongruous celebration. “At the River” starts in floating liquidity but ends with Ives’s version fairly straight, plus echoes.

The choice of percussion seems just right in “In the mornin’” and “The Cage”. The repeated note at the end of “The See’r” is cleverly exploited. “Serenity” starts loudly but soon responds to the transcendental calm of the original. Only “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” is meandering and “Songs my mother taught me” has an odd background of speaking voices – but it builds impressively. These songs thrive in this idiom. Ives is a standard: he’s arrived.