Lest you imagine some misprint in the album title, this tribute album is an homage not only to drummer Max Roach but also pianist-composer Horace Silver, two neglected giants of bop and post-bop, hard-bop or whatever you want to call the golden age of straight-ahead, hard-swinging modern jazz. As a member of Charlie Parker's classic quintet Roach was of course in at the birth of bop, but it is as the leader of later supergroups featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown and tenorist Sonny Rollins that he will be better remembered. Silver, sadly no longer active, was not only an ultra-funky soloist but also wrote some of hippest jazz standards in the post-bop book.

With the awesome Eric Alexander – at his George Coleman-inspired best on Monk's standard, Evidence – and several other top-class players on hand, satisfaction is guaranteed. Added to this, the unexpected expertise of drummer Chambers on vibraphone and marimba is a major bonus. His brilliant solo on ‘Ecaroh’, taken at a slower tempo than usual and all the better for it, is not only technically impressive but refreshingly personal in concept. More, please. Pianist Helen Sung, fantastic at Ronnie Scott's a few years ago, makes a welcome guest appearance on an Abbey Lincoln song, ‘Lonesome Lover’, and Nicole Guiland's impassioned vocal on ‘Mendacity’, a blizzard-of-lies lyric for our times, recalls Abbey's cutting-edge work with Roach on such classic albums as Freedom Now – We Insist! Thoughtfully compiled and soufully performed, this is one of Savant's best albums to date.