Jazz breaking news: Trio Of Dates For Hendelman Trio As The Pianist Moves Up A Level With The Release of Destinations

But the Los Angeles-based jazz pianist who has been making waves below the radar as a top accompanist and sideman for some years now is to embark on a likely profile-raising tour next month teaming up with a leading pair of UK mainstreamers, jazz bassist Andrew Cleyndert best known for his work with Stan Tracey, and in-demand BBC Big Band drummer Tom Gordon. The tour follows the UK release of Hendelman’s latest album and new turning point in his career, Destinations released on Resonance Records.

Hendelman, though little known in the UK as a leader, has appeared here with the stellar Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and with Barbra Streisand on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and appears on Streisand's critically acclaimed album from 2009 Love Is The Answer. By contrast Destinations, a 12-track instrumental album, with bassist Marco Panascia and drummer Lewis Nash, opening with the standard ‘Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams’ and concluding with Fred Hersch’s original, ‘Valentine’, is packed full of little pleasures with Hendelman’s style firmly rooted at the advanced end of mainstream piano, not at all showy or in-your-face but certainly not a background listen. Very subtle and finely judged voicings, measured when needs-be but suitably expressive as well, the real surprise about the album is the way Hendelman tackles Keith Jarrett’s ‘My Song’, opening out from an episode that sounds like a child’s music box at first developing into a very unsentimental and considered take on the great song from the 1977 album of the same name.

Israeli-born Hendelman debuted as a leader on another trio album Playground released two years ago on Swing Brothers Records, on that occasion with bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton. Hendelman moved to the US as a young boy in 1984, winning a Yamaha national keyboard competition two years later when he was 14 before going on to study at the Tanglewood Institute and later the Eastman School of Music. He joined the Jeff Hamilton Trio a decade ago, and in 2001 became a member of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, also touring in Europe later with singer Tierney Sutton and the Bill Holman Big Band. The Hendelman trio is only here for gigs at the Pheasantry, King's Rd, London (9 December); Nairn Community and Arts Centre, Scotland (11 December) and the Bull’s Head, Barnes (21 December). If the gigs work out and word of mouth builds, chances are we’ll be hearing more from this fine pianist in the future as his career as a leader develops.

– Stephen Graham