Very solid straightahead fare from US pianist Geoffrey Dean anchored winningly by bassist Harish Raghavan on this new studio album recorded in Brooklyn, the quartet completed by the very pure and tender sounding trumpeter Justin Copeland and by drummer Eric Binder. The very well chosen tunes melding the familiar with the not so screamingly obvious numbers are Wayne Shorter's 'ESP,' Miles Davis' 'Nardis,' Sam Rivers' 'Cyclic Episode,' Elmo Hope's deftly swinging 'Low Tide,' Peter Bernstein's 'Jet Stream,' which was on the guitarist's 1995 album Signs of Life, Andrew Hill's 'Yokada Yokada' from Hill's classic Blue Note 60s album Judgment, Duke Pearson's 'Is That So' and Sonny Clark pieces Cool Struttin's 'Blue Minor' and 'My Conception' from the Blue Note album of the same name issued long after Clark's death. There's a lot of poise to Dean's comping and break out solos. And Copeland is excellent on the Pearson piece, his style landing in the Jeremy Pelt domain quite often. While the tunes often go back many years the quartet do not sound stuck in the past at all. Enjoyable stuff and a great introduction to Dean's highly individualistic playing.

l-r in the photo: Eric Binder, Harish Raghavan, Geoffrey Dean, Justin Copeland