For his authority and fluency as a selflessly creative child of the jazz-piano era spanning Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and McCoy Tyner, the 57-year-old New Jersey pianist David Kikoski was always cut out to be the perfect post-bop sideman. His big break after his early 1980s Berklee years was a long stint with drums star Roy Haynes, and he's partnered the late Bob Berg, the Mingus Big Band and a lot more. Phoenix Rising, Kikoski's HighNote debut, finds him and a fine quartet including fleet post-bop saxophonist Eric Alexander, cruising through a mostly-standards tracklist. Alexander's ‘Kik It’ is a straightahead hard-bop blues anchored on the tenorist's weighty sound and the leader's long twinkling runs and Tyner-like chording. ‘Wichita Lineman’ has an elegant solo-piano intro in country-music harmonies, stretched and diverted in swaying variations over Joe Farnsworth's rimshot click, Johnny Mandel's ‘Emily’ brings out Kikoski's understated harmonic adventurousness, and ‘Love For Sale’ and ‘Willow Weep for Me’ are somewhat forced-sounding efforts to squeeze gracefully touching songs into jazz-rocking boogaloo swaggers. Kikoski's seamless linear inventiveness gets the green light on a Giant Steps-inspired account of Coltrane's ‘Lazy Bird’, however, and an open, unhurried, and sensitive reading of ‘My One and Only Love’ is the standout track. It's a fluently eloquent, if generic session – the only downside being Kikoski's choice not to emphasise the talents as an original composer he often indicated in the late 1990s.