Going by just appearance, you might mistake the 24-year old pianist Connie Han for a glamorous female classical crossover artist or an anime superheroine. But that would be wide of the mark. New CD Iron Starlet follows her American jazz media-rated 2018 Mack Avenue debut Crime Zone and it's another unapologetically sophisticated jazz recording in the contemporary straightahead mould. Sonically it's a classy record but it doesn't lack substance. The Los Angeles-raised pianist is in good company with the like-minded Walter Smith III and Jeremy Pelt, a pair of accomplished, sinewy frontline horns, both go-to thoroughbreds from the current post-bop school. Aside from interesting arrangements of Eugene McDaniels' ‘Hello to the Wind’ and the standard ‘Detour Ahead’, originals are split between the pianist and her producer-drummer Bill Wysake.

Han's convivial pianistic sensibilities invoke such influences as McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Oscar Peterson and Kenny Kirkland. From solid roots, she's already developed a personal signature: a percussively infectious energy and expressive phraseology on piano and Fender Rhodes that's all her own.