Listening to the Phil Norman Tentet is like hearing the very essence of the best big band jazz – with all the thrills of that remarkable sound, but a lot less volume.  Big bands are often described as the symphony orchestras of jazz.  More than that, big band instrumentation has been vital to the soundtrack of American life for nearly a century.  
But mid-sized bands such as the Tentet have played an equally vital role as the chamber ensembles of jazz, with a similarly rich potential for creative diversity. 
Think of the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool bands, the West Coast jazz bands of the fifties, the Mingus bands, and – more recently – the octets of Dave Holland and David Murray.  Each is different from the other, finding new, illuminating ways to use an instrumentation of eight to ten or eleven players in authentic jazz fashion.