Barney Kessel: Let's Cook! (Contemporary)

Guitarist Kessel has headed some exceptional albums, but this is among his best - and it's graced by at least one truly memorable performance. The product of two relatively casual but superior 1957 blowing sessions, it features a pair of highly compatible groups, one with Vic Feldman and a rhythm section of Hampton Hawes, Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne, the other with the great Ben Webster, Frank Rosolino, Jimmy Rowles, Vinnegar and Manne. Amid a remarkably high overall standard, it's Webster and company who do one for the ages - a brilliant trip, almost 10 minutes long, over the venerable contours of Tiger Rag. Webster turns in one of his greatest solos, Rowles is quirkily masterful, Rosolino exuberant, before Kessel seizes on Rosolino's closing phrase to build his own magisterial contribution to a classic.

Ray Comiskey

Eric Kloss: Sky Shadows in the Land of the Giants (Prestige)

If it's possible to judge someone by the company he keeps, then saxophonist Kloss was clearly high maintenance. Now seldom heard, he headed some outstanding sessions in the late 1960s for Prestige, two of which, Sky Shadows and In The Land Of The Giants, make their initial appearance on CD here. Each features him leading a quintet, the first with guitarist Pat Martino and a rhythm section of Jaki Byard, Bob Cranshaw and Jack DeJohnette, the second with tenor Booker Ervin and Byard, Richard Davis and Alan Dawson. Strong, challenging, uncompromisingly forward-looking music resulted, with Kloss, only 19 at the time and a mixture of hard bop and Coltrane, able to hold his own with the fiercely individual talents around him. His encounter with Ervin, especially, sounds impressively contemporary three decades on.

Ray Comiskey