Given pianist Sands’ profile these days, it seemed sensible to set aside one’s usual indifference to the American record industry’s penchant for Christmas recordings.

That said, this is still something of a vapid experience or to put it another way, at best a mixed bag. However much you jolly up ‘Jingle Bells’ with bluesy opening chords and guitar overlays, it still ends up, as, well, ‘Jingle Bells.’ Greene then plays the theme of ‘Let It Snow!’ in Coltrane-esque fashion, Ryan Sands breaking up the beat, ahead of the tenor’s solo trajectory and some spirited piano before it fades out. Worthy but dull, you might say. ‘Have Yourself A Merry Christmas’ is given a statelier trio ride, much in Ahmad Jamal’s manner and opens pleasingly, Sands digging in as he should.

‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ is given a Latin overhaul, with Ogawa’s percussion foremost and bowls along nicely, with Sands in ebullient form. His harmonically bright ‘Snow Dayz’ gets a funky treatment, drummer Sands thwacking the off-beat and Light featured while ‘Shovelling,’ another original, is modestly programmatic, percussion conveying the action of snow clearing, the piano elegiac and thoughtful. ‘Silent Night’ is rhapsodic, not to say overblown while ‘A Christmas Hymn,’ with Harris and Sands running the show, is suitably reverential before ‘The Gift’ gives Harris a rather fuller opportunity to impress and he does. So, yes, a mixed bag, with only momentary glimpses of Sands, the Grammy-nominated jazz improviser, and Greene hardly heard.