This nine-track album from the Chris Coull/Sara Oschlag quintet features an impressively varied song list which profitably dips into Carmen McRae’s brilliant, Grammy-nominated 1990 album Carmen Sings Monk for a brace of songs – the first a great take on the Monk/Hawkins-penned standard, ‘I Mean You’, with lyrics by the late vocalese master Jon Hendricks, the second Monk’s classic ballad ‘Ruby, My Dear’ with lyrics by Sally Swisher, which McRae retitled as ‘Dear Ruby’.

Whether balladeering on a terrific version of the Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne evergreen ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily’, or demonstrating her rhythmic drive and fecund melodic imagination in Cole Porter’s ‘Just One Of Those Things’, cast here as a hard-driving modal vamp, Danish-born, Brighton-based vocalist Sara Oschlag is an impressive presence throughout. Other highlights include an extended exploration of ‘Angel Eyes’, a standard that will forever be associated with Ella Fitzgerald (and reputed to be her favourite song). Oschlag receives exemplary support from the crack rhythm section of pianist Mark Edwards, bassist Dan Sheppard and drummer Darren Beckett, while trumpeter Coull proves a classy soloist.

There’s a pair of fine instrumentals, too, with Coull’s ‘One More In’ – a contrafact on ‘You Stepped Out Of A Dream’ – plus the wonderful Clifford Brown standard ‘Daahoud’ which features a great solo from Beckett.