I don't think we have heard Joey Alexander's best work yet. However, his virtuoso qualifications have long been established and this is a beauty. Of course he is still very young and emerged as a child prodigy so seems already a veteran. His closest equivalent is Julian Lage and really it is only in the last five years roughly that Lage's incredible talent has moved up on to a new plateau. (What I am stumbling towards here is that jazz is more than perfect virtuosity, it does not even need perfection. It is however a meeting of the spirits both in the band and how it connects with the audience whether at a venue or listening to audio in its humanity and transformation. That is when lightning strikes.)

His best album to date in the sense of going way beyond the technique carousel because he and we all can take it for granted Warna has a lightness in the voicings and the optimism of youth undimmed by grim setback that makes the trajectory of each tune shine. And yet we need the profundity of life and will have to wait for that to add in.

Caveat? I don't think he needed to cover Sting’s 'Fragile' (no one did that better, more sumptuously, in a jazz version than Freddie Hubbard and the tune has been done to death by 1980s nostalgics) although choosing Joe Henderson’s 'Inner Urge' was a good idea and is delivered in a stately, grand progess. The album title references Alexander's mother tonque Bahasa and means 'colour' and what that means to me here above all is a journey into the light and towards greater enlightenment.

Bassist Larry Grenadier and percussionist Kendrick Scott make everything look easy as does Alexander himself. He is born to play. Following the example of the great Ahmad Jamal the instrumentation includes a percussionist, Luisito Quintero no less (who has a cult following) with the twist in the presence of a sunny flautist Anne Drummond in the mix. Get this today. You'll marvel. SG

Out on Verve.