Beginning life on stage as the Fats Waller Dance Party in 2011, when pianist Jason Moran was asked by the Harlem Stage Gatehouse to create a tribute to the Harlem stride master as part of its ‘Harlem Jazz Shrines’ series, All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller is a masterly homage to the legendary stride pianist, singer and composer. Joining the pianist on this joyful recasting of Waller's music is vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello, and what an inspired pairing it turns out to be. Anyone who's heard Ndegeocello's 2012 album, Pour une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone, knows the kind of transformational power she can bring to such a project, and so it proves here. By turns playful and sensuous, the singer takes the material to completely new emotional places. Highlights include ‘Ain't Nobody's Business’, recast here as an über-slow jam, some of the most infectiously effervescent music-making I've heard this year on ‘The Joint Is Jumpin’, plus the extraordinarily grooving pocket of drummer Charles Haynes on ‘Honeysuckle Rose’. ‘Handful Of Keys’ provides a barnstorming solo spot for Moran, while ‘Jitterbug Waltz’ is utterly transformed into a sumptuous, outer-spacious reverie.