New York based-vocalist Fay Victor has been making excellent music for the best part of three decades, both as leader and collaborator with the likes of William Parker, and her work has been marked by a daringly consistent originality. Life Is Funny That Way could well be a career highlight insofar as it shows how she can be herself while thoroughly living within the world of another.

This celebration of Herbie Nichols sees Victor put lyrics to the compositions of the influential (or, rather prophetic) 1950s pianist who created a melodic, harmonic and improvisatory landscape that had the most beautifully strange, stimulating contours. Victor, with her strong but supple tone, and delivery that can veer from sentimentality to irony in a beat, is more than up to the task. Her ability to blur scat and written lines, giving each piece a wonderfully loose, ambling feel, is imperious, supported by a stellar band that can swing as effectively as it fragments rhythm and fractures groove.

Alto-baritone saxophonist Michael Attias proves an excellent frontline partner to Victor, who captures and conveys all the wry, weary bluesiness and pithy imagination of singers who are indirectly connected to Nichols. Billie Holiday’s ‘Lady Sings The Blues’ was reprised by the pianist, and it is also re-arranged here in suitably plaintive fashion while one of Lady Day’s most notable successors, Abbey Lincoln is like a wandering spirit throughout the album. Every track is notable but ‘Sinners All Of Us’ is particularly strong for the leftfield gospel resonances. Victor is a contemporary improviser and singer of the highest order and this work shows that her ability to walk the tight rope between avant-garde and mainstream has now pushed her to a creative peak.