Arturo O’Farrill, Legacies, Blue Note ***1/2

Afro-Latin pianist Arturo O’Farrill - hugely acclaimed and honoured in the States down the decades - here with bassist Liany Mateo and Arturo's son drummer Zack O’Farrill. Scene setting solo statements pour into trio explorations in what becomes a treasure trove of material often quite familiar spanning Herbie Hancock's 'Dolphin Dance,' Sonny Rollins' 'Doxy' and here too is an absorbing take on Monk's 'Well, You Needn’t.'

Some less familiar standards make the cut too even when the work of a famous pianist and icon - so Carla Bley's tongue twisting 'Utviklingssang' hasn't been covered for several years and few will know the version by Finnish great pianist/harpist Iro Haarla with Ulf Krokfors and the legendary Barry Altschul.

O'Farrill factors in a few of his own tunes and these work well as a glimpse of the originality of his compositional lens and match in the sequence of the album with the treatment of Pedro Flores' 'Obsesión,' a song that goes back to Cuban master Benny Moré's in the 1950s - the best selection of all for us. There is fine flair and a sense of riff mastery from Mateo here.

The sentimental choice on an album that carefully moderates that sometimes overdone feeling is the Jimmy Van Heusen song 'Darn That Dream'. To sum up, there is both a wonderful sensitivity and massive power at O'Farrill's disposal and you gain a fantastic exuberance on Bud Powell classic 'Un Poco Loco' as an example of the inherent joy that abounds. The trio to be perfectly honest can only but bask in the shade of the master - it would be folly not to, given what this formidable interpreter of jazz within an Afro-latin lens has to say so sagaciously. Arturo O’Farrill, photo: John Abbott/Blue Note

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Blue days, all of them gone: The songs are so familiar - Irving Berlin and Gershwins pantheon familiar. You might think: not again! But think again. Put the song titles in some sort of a sentence and that sentence has a narrative of its own: the man I love, it had to be you, after you've gone, blue skies, someone to watch over me, sweet Georgia Brown.

Emmaline Campbell knows how to state and elevate these person-to-person much loved songs. And she has a kind of Ella Fitzgerald like purity in her voice which is no mean feat. The US singer from Indiana plays Jeanne Staples in basketball movie Sweetwater which stars Everett Osborne in the title role of Nat 'Sweetwater' Clifton, the first African-American to sign an NBA contract. The Staples character is a jazz singer wannabe and friend of Sweetwater's.

Brief and to the point this EP, certainly Emmaline emerges as an upmarket ready-to-go new jazz singing star in the classic mould tailor made for the newly excited Samara Joy fanbase wanting heaps more of the same. Irving Berlin classic 'Blue Skies' from the 1920s is the pick, covered in recent years by in complete contrast a whole lot more Carmen Lundy-like and to be frank more real by Eugenie Jones. Emmaline's skill however is in stripping away the contemporary entirely to locate the vintage underlayer without being fuddy-duddy. She finds the essential portion of the lyrics because the point of the Berlin song after all is the line Blue days, all of them gone and what these ''blues skies'' need above all to banish completely. Emmaline, photo: press

Arturo O’Farrill, Legacies, Blue Note ***1/2

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