This absorbing album by German jazz great Joachim Kühn introduces a new trio with musicians half his age – Chris Jennings on bass and Eric Schaefer on drums (the latter a stalwart of Michael Wollny's ensembles). What separates Beauty & Truth from his previous albums on the ACT label is an energy in Kühn's playing that seems to derive from the introduction of younger blood. A musician whose wide-ranging imagination has taken him into countless contexts and playing situations – for example, not too many outside Germany realise that Ornette Coleman worked exclusively with Kühn between 1996-2000 – here his work is grounded in the groove. Yet Kühn never gets carried away into excitable flights; there is great emotional focus in what he does, probing each song to yield more than its composer ever intended. Opening with Coleman's ‘Beauty And Truth’, which gives the album its name, Kühn contributes five originals but interestingly explores The Doors’ ‘Riders On the Storm’ and ‘The End’, Gil Evans’ ‘Blues for Pablo’ and two originals by the somewhat neglected European jazz giant, Krzysztof Komeda. The Polish pianist and composer left jazz a fine legacy of originals that still offer much for the contemporary jazz musician to chew on, as Kühn demonstrates here.