To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Fred Hersch Trio, whose personnel has remained constant throughout, Palmetto have released in box set form the group's complete Palmetto recordings. Comprising five major releases, Alive at the Vanguard from 2012 is a two-volume set, three consecutive albums – Floating, Sunday Night at the Vanguard and Live in Europe – were Grammy nominated. In the liner notes, Ted Gioia poses the eternal problem for jazz musicians today – do they explore and reexamine what has gone before, or do they push on hoping to make new discoveries and find uncharted waters. But, he argues, for a select few it's not a binary choice. There is a third option, but only open to the very best improvisers and that is going deeper into the repertoire and unearthing new gems, “Even when they play what's old, it sounds alive and new,” he says. This neatly encapsulates pianist Fred Hersch's art. That he is a major soloist in today's jazz scene there is no doubt, as this invaluable set makes clear. Perhaps the most rewarding of these six CDs is Sunday Night at the Vanguard, recorded in 2016. Here, on pieces such as ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’, ‘The Peacocks’ and Kenny Wheeler's ‘Everybody's Song But My Own’ key elements – empathy, intuition, inspiration and flair – combine to produce performances that go straight to the meaning of the improvisers’ art and are performances that will endure. Great jazz is still being produced today, as this set rightly celebrates.