Latest releases reviewed

JAN LUNDGREN
Will You Still Be Mine? Fresh Sound
*****
Sweden's young Jan Lundgren belongs in the great piano trio tradition epitomised by Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly and Hank Jones, bringing to it a freshness and imagination of his own. Uniting him with bassist Tom Warrington and drummer Joe LaBarbera and setting him loose on the music of singer/ songwriter/pianist Matt Dennis has resulted in possibly the finest CD yet devoted to Dennis's work. The famous ones are there (Violets for Your Furs, Everything Happens to Me), as well as little-known gems: Little Man With a Candy Cigar, an irresistably grooving We Belong Together and a sublime solo version of Spring Isn't Spring Anymore. If a straight-ahead swinging piano trio is your thing, this is one of the albums of the year.
www.freshsoundrecords.com - Ray Comiskey

MIKE HOLOBER
Thought Trains Sons of Sound
****

Holober has quite a pedigree - as a pianist with John Abercrombie and Dave Liebman, among others, as a composer-orchestrator with the Vanguard and Stockholm Jazz orchestras - which this Gotham Jazz Orchestra release should considerably enhance. Recorded in 1996 but only just issued, this documents a powerhouse big band with stellar soloists in trumpeters Scott Wendholt and Joe Magnarelli, saxophonists Tim Ries, Charles Pillow and Jon Gordon, and a rhythm section which, besides Holober, benefits from the presence of bassist Ron Carter. Holober's charts are packed with incident, their contrapuntal ways reminiscent of Bill Holman, even if the voicings tend to mix sections more. They're also beautifully executed by a band moulded into a precise, swinging unit by Holober. www.sonsofsound.com  - Ray Comiskey

MADELEINE PEYROUX
Careless Love Rounder/Universal
***

Peyroux made an acclaimed début as a jazz singer in 1996 - and then promptly disappeared. In the eight years between that and her just released second CD, Peyroux even busked on the streets of Paris before returning to her native America. For anyone hearing her for the first time there's a shock; she sounds uncannily like Billie Holiday; same vocal timbre, same lazily floating delivery. It's apparently an accident, but she's the real deal as a jazz singer, if hardly in Lady Day's class. Here she takes material by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams and W.C. Handy and, aptly backed by a small group including Larry Goldings on piano, Hammond and other keyboards, makes it her own. Quirky and enjoyable; Peyroux should stick around longer this time. - Ray Comiskey