Vocalist, instrumentalist and composer Cherise Adams-Burnett was everywhere you looked in 2019. While she’s a featured vocalist with London-based collective Nubiyan Twist and has guested on Ashley Henry & the RE:ensemble’s Easter EP and SEED Ensemble’s Mercury-nominated Driftglass, we haven’t, until now, had a release from Adams-Burnett herself. It’s pleasing to report that – for its ambition, its imagination, and its poetry – this debut EP has been more than worth the wait. With all four songs composed and arranged by Adams-Burnett, and produced by the great Jason Yarde, album opener ‘Paradise’ ushers the listener into an imaginary idyll of soft breezes and vivid colours, and features both a terrific scat, which hints at a pleasingly gritty vocal quality, and a solo of marmoreal smoothness from tenor saxist Chelsea Carmichael. Heard in a luxuriant orchestral version at last year’s Jazz Voice, ‘Violet Nights’ nods to the Great American Songbook and shows its composer’s versatility as a songwriter – with lovely acoustic guitar work by Tal Janes. ‘Siren Song’ glides along on a hypnotic, syncopated bass ostinato – subtly doubled during the intro and outro by a 15-strong choir – and, like the mythological creatures referenced in the title, once heard, it’s impossible to resist, lit up by another fine solo from trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey. Scored for band, choir and string quartet, the touching vignette ‘Felicity’ exudes elegiac insight from every pore.