The latest releases reviewed

CHRISTINE TOBIN
Secret Life of a Girl
Babel
*****
This arresting new album, like its singer, composer, lyricist and begetter, is beyond category. A memoir of the imaginative spirit, epigrammatic, mordant and celebratory, with snapshots of experience, Secret Life of a Girlworks by metaphor, allusion and elision. Tobin creates, often on the slenderest of harmonic bases, wonders of line and phrasing, from the playfulness of Camille, the calculating capriciousness of Minx, the mix of naivety and retrospective knowingness of Dreamlandand No Love No Thrill, and the richly metaphoric Corner of an Eye. The remarkable unity of the album is reinforced by a superb band in which colleagues Phil Robson (guitars), Liam Noble (piano and prepared piano) and Kate Shortt (cello) are excellent soloists. There are fine covers of Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knowsand Rufus Wainwright's Poses.  www.babellabel.co.uk
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BENJAMIN SCHAEFER
Roots and Wings
enja
****
Only 27, pianist/composer Schaefer is a gifted, assured performer leading a front-rank trio with Robert Landfermann (bass) and Marcus Rieck (drums). Schaefer straddles both classical and jazz, while the group dynamic echoes the interactive trio democracy trailblazed by Bill Evans, and EST, its contemporary, European accent. They go about things, however, with undeniable freshness, vibrancy and a real sense of mutual engagement and discovery. Impressionist and poetic on the evocative The City Awakens, Sereneand the sombre Novembertage, Schaefer (and the trio) can also groove persuasively on the buoyantly measured development of The Red Roomand a rocking, down-home Honourfield Parade, or blend the thoughtful and the outgoing on Valentimesand April in Aeolia. No rules broken - as yet - but impressive. www.enjarecords.com
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PETER DELANO
For Dewey
Nocturne
****
Delano, who resumed playing in 2007 after many years away with an appalling back injury, was only 18 when he made this previously unreleased album in 1994. Guesting with the brilliant pianist's trio on three of his five well-crafted originals was the late Dewey Redman, in fine form. The great tenor's authoritative sense of line and space provided an effective contrast to Delano's virtuosic abundance of ideas. And despite Delano's roots in bop and Bud Powell (with a touch of Tyner), and Redman's espousal of Coltrane's innovations, it worked. The trio tracks include three standards; swinging, highly inventive examinations of For All We Know, If I Should Lose Youand, especially, a marvellously reimagined Every Time We Say Goodbye, whose familiarity perhaps gives the readiest insight into Delano's even-then outstanding talent.
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