Lyoba Revisited
ACT ***

JAZZ:Shepherds' songs and rustic pieces by an early 20th-century Swiss priest, Joseph Bovet, are the basis for this return to his origins by Swiss pianist Thierry Lang. With Matthieu Michel (flugelhorn), Heiri Känzig (bass) and a cello quartet, Lang delves into songs used to call cows home, salute a birthplace, or recall old homes; ingratiatingly melodic themes, full of nostalgia and homesickness. If they have a particular resonance in Switzerland, they're also the poet AE Housman's "land of lost content": a sentimental, universal longing for another time, a distant place, a youth gone. It's nicely done. With the cellos mainly as backgrounds, Thierry, Michel and Känzig are excellent soloists, though Thierry's romanticism is in thrall to the personal evocations. But

Michel’s gorgeous flugelhorn, so reminiscent of Kenny Wheeler, is by any standards simply superb. www.actmusic.com