Many Jazzwise readers will be familiar with Larry Goldings as one of the leading Hammond organ players in jazz. But this album, culled from two of his trio residencies at the Sam First club in Los Angeles, focuses on his excellent piano playing. The familiar chordal approach of his organ work appears on his pianistic treatment of Mario Bauza’s ‘Mambo Inn’, which the trio invests with a jaunty and relaxed swing, but the delicacy and intricacy of his piano work, and brilliantly dexterous solo lines, appear at their best on the ruminative title track by Lennon and McCartney, as well as a somewhat abstract version of ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ which leaves Porgy and Bess far behind.

The trio returns to Gershwin for a totally absorbing version of ‘Embraceable You’, with a fine musical dialogue between bass and piano around the halfway mark. The theme hovers close to the new ideas that the group bring to the piece, not least as they repeat the penultimate phrase several times without resolving it, before subsiding gently into silence. The ideal balance between the familiar and new invention comes on ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story. The melody emerges at the end of the languorous introduction, before the band slips into an easy groove that is trio playing at its best.