It's quite a coup for the Improvised Music Company to get Jim McNeely, a pianist, composer and arranger with an outstanding jazz pedigree. Just 50 this year, he has earned his spurs with Chet Baker, Joe Henderson and in lengthy tenures in the take-no-prisoners - for different reasons - context of the Stan Getz Quartet, with which he visited Dublin in the early 1980s, and the musical cauldron of the Phil Woods Quintet. In his quietly original, unfussy way he has stamped his mark on both these groups as a player and a writer, gradually achieving a deserved recognition of his massive talents from his peers - his Maybeck recital in the Concord solo piano series is superb and he currently divides his time between writing for New York's Vanguard Orchestra, directing the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra and anything else that catches his fancy. Like playing tomorrow at Whelans in Dublin with Ronan and Conor Guilfoyle in what could be one of the concerts of the year.