This week's releases reviewed

JIM HALL/BOB BROOKMEYER Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival 1979 Challenge *****

First issued only 10 years ago, this gem catches Hall and Brookmeyer in beguiling form. What's striking about it, apart from the seamless empathy, is their contrasting temperaments. Although Brookmeyer can develop a motif, his solos are usually full of long, flowing, logical lines; even as an improviser his instincts are compositional. Hall, while no less logical, is quirkier, more earthy and unpredictable, using contrast – of chords and single note lines as well as dynamic shifts of register – as a device to frame the dramatic arc of each solo. The tonal blend and range of trombone and guitar, moreover, are ideal. And to hear the freshness and wit that, 30 years on, still suffuse Skating in Central Park, I Hear a Rhapsody, Body and Soul, Darn That Dream, St Thomasand the rest is a salutary example of what brilliant jazz musicians can do. www.propernote.co.uk RAY COMISKEY 

TIERNEY SUTTON Desire Telarc ****

Standards may seem too lightweight for an emotional and spiritual reflection on good and evil, but singer Tierney Sutton, a longtime member of the Baha'i faith, makes the concept work surprisingly well. Buoyed by her close-knit band of 10 years – Christian Jacob (piano), Ray Brinker (drums) and Trey Henry or Kevin Axt (bass) – Sutton delivers perhaps her finest album yet. With Whatever Lola Wantsan almost Faustian rumination, she bends It's Only a Paper Moon(minus two key words), My Heart Belongs to Daddy, Dave Frishberg's cogent Long Daddy Greenand Heart's Desire, and even a prayerful Then I'll Be Tired of Youand Skylark, to her declaration of faith. And though it's a stretch to make the remaining choices fit the good/evil conflict, overall the unifying idea yields some of the most eloquent, charged and individual standard interpretations in a long while. www.propernote.co.uk RAY COMISKEY

TROYKA Troyka Edition ***

This acclaimed British trio use a traditional guitar-organ-drums line-up – played respectively by Chris Montague (who also does loops), Kit Downes and Joshua Blackmore – in a non-traditonal way. However, in an eclectic range of sources (rock, funk, jazz, dance grooves), too often they don't seem to be sure of what to dwell on and what to merely reference. There's an abundance of imagination in Troyka and they can strike an elemental groove, but there's also a mostly unresolved tension between the visceral and the merely smart. At times ideas are quickly dropped, undeveloped, in the rush to go somewhere else, or else they're allowed to drift inconsequentially. Despite this, to hear the crisply together, no-nonsense way they deal with the contrapuntal intricacies of Noonian Soongis to sense that behind it is a fine, perhaps even original band. www.editionrecords.com RAY COMISKEY