Blue Note and the Verve group of historic jazz labels have maintained a healthy, if tiny, redoubt in Universal’s vast music empire. That apart, the major labels quit new jazz many years ago, so UK pianist Henry’s signing by Sony is one more sign of happily changing times. The 26-year-old’s playing is broadly hard bop, but as with so many of his peers, this is a starting point, not a cage. His love for the sunkissed spot in the early 1990s when hip hop discovered rhythmic roots and spiritual balm in both bop and soul music is confirmed by a cover of Nas’s Ahmad Jamal-sampling classic ‘The World Is Yours’. The original’s Scarface-quoting rap is wisely dropped for an instrumental built on Daniel Casimir’s deep bass pulse, which lets Henry move between blues and luxuriantly romantic solo ripples. Coventry indie-rock band The Enemy’s ‘Pressure’ meanwhile showcases Cherise Adams-Burnett’s soul vocal. The ambience is again a quarter-century old, this time recalling Soul II Soul’s epochal UK R&B. Henry’s own ‘Bunny’ is a more straightforward, standards-style ballad. ‘Easter’ is his most expansive composition, with its hip hop shuffle beats and latin piano passages, and poetry, sonorously declaimed by Anthony Joseph, which revels in spring’s natural and spiritual resurrection. This prelude to Henry’s upcoming LP is distractingly steeped in over-familiar pasts. It also sets out his open, ambitious agenda.