At 29 years of age, Christian Sands is reckoned by some to be the leading jazz pianist of his generation. You can hear his promise on this latest release, recorded with his core trio featuring bassist Yasushi Nakamura and drummer Jerome Jennings, and where across the nine tracks he’s joined by a variety of players who provide a multitude of different sounds and textures. It’s a shape-shifting collection, beginning with the propulsive trio track ‘Rebel Music’ and concluding with the solo ‘Rhodes to Meditation’, a spacy, perhaps overlong piece of spiritual examination performed on a – yes, you guessed it – Fender Rhodes. Eight of the tracks are originals; the only cover, of The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’, is a questionable inclusion. It begins with a statement of the theme very much in the tradition of Erroll Garner (Sands was recently named the creative ambassador of the Erroll Garner Jazz Project), but the subsequent, exuberant elaborations feel overdone. ‘Frankenstein’, by contrast, finds Sands working in a more Herbie Hancock vein and getting full value from Keyon Harrold and Marcus Strickland on trumpet and sax. There are five tracks featuring guitarist Caio Afiune, not least the lovely, lyrical ballad ‘Her Song’.