The core band on this sashaying suite played together for decades in the late flautist Dave Valentin's band. They channel the experience into the brash confidence and outgoing energy of a vibrant album that neatly balances jazz harmony and latin discipline. Deep-toned bassist Lincoln Goines pushes the beat and follows the changes, while drummer Bobby Ameen adds decorative flair and urgency to the pre-set patterns and grooves of latin dance. Pianist and leader Bill O’Connell joined Valentin in 1980, by which time he had cut his teeth with Mongo Santamaria's band and played with the likes of Sonny Rollins and Gato Barbieri. This depth of experience is reflected in a playing style that draws on the impressionist voicings of Bill Evans and the quicksilver lines of modern jazz, as well as the full-blooded vamps of latin jazz. The album opens with the suitably stylish and resilient ‘Obama Samba’, dedicated to the former president “dancing out of the white house” after eight years in office and continues with a rampaging Afro-Cuban ‘Just One of Those Things’. Valentin, who died in 2017, is remembered on ‘Footprints’ – the bass riff is stretched, the turnaround subtly rephrased. ‘Tip Toes’ gives Monkish angularity a latin flavour and the album ends with a short up-tempo mash-up called ‘What is This’. Guests include Craig Handy playing elegant, light touch tenor sax on ‘It's OK’ (based on Brazilian ‘partido alto’, the sleeve notes tell us); Andrea Brachfeld delivering graceful flute on ‘Quicksand’; and guitarist Don Carillo fleshes out the harmonies of the elegiac ‘Goodbye My Friend’, which also features Randy Brecker on trumpet. The guests add lustre, but it's the core trio that consistently impresses by packing the punch of a band twice its size.