The piano trio setting is still considered the test of a jazz pianist's mettle. Since his 2003 debut Daydreams, the Bolton-born Sheriff has instead been thoroughly focused on larger ensemble writing/arranging and being a jazz ambassador in the North of England, primarily as the Jazz Course leader at the acclaimed Leeds College of Music, where he's had his work cut out. So it's hardly a surprise that this new piano trio recording has been on the backburner for a couple of years or so. But a patient, slow burn has its own advantages and the debut trio album Places Like This, on local label New Jazz Records, has been worth the wait. Sheriff as pianist and composer isn't coming from the most obvious places, be it the typical traditional-based or modish contemporary piano trio models. There's something old and something new in everything here, an improvising and composing aesthetic that appears to draw something from the likes of Monk, McCoy, Jarrett and Jason Moran's twists on early jazz solo piano idioms and Joanne Brackeen's orchestral melodicism (a huge inspiration to the London-based pianist Zoe Rahman). It's engaging stuff at any rate and pretty exhilarating from start to finish.