About to celebrate his 80th birthday this month, Kenny Barron has been busy professionally since he was 18 and is still active with recent releases. Depending on the state of the jazz industry at various times, he has also been very prolific, including the period of this reissue dating from when Alan Bates purchased the Candid catalogue and was busy commissioning new recordings of American musicians. In its typical programme, Barron covers the ground from a handful of old standard songs, a couple of new standard-type originals (written by Rufus Reid and one of Barron’s piano students), a Monk tune, a slow blues, a calypso (Blue Mitchell’s ‘Fungii Mama’) and his own two compositions that open and close the programme. These are potentially more demanding, ‘Lemuria’ being somewhat modal in approach (and inspired by the Pacific Ocean’s answer to Atlantis), but Barron’s level of invention in all these settings seems so effortless that it would be easy to overlook. It’s clear, however, that his long-standing colleagues Drummond and Riley are listening to every nuance, and inviting you to do likewise.