This live recording from Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan was made using a single binaural microphone. “This technique places the listener in the middle of a live show,” the press release tells me. Well, yes, but also a little closer to the cymbals than I would have liked. The set consists of solid standards – ‘Without A Song’, ‘Invitation’, ‘Willow Weep For Me’ and ‘Jackie-ing’ – with two of the drummer’s originals, and it’s very much a heads-solos-heads procedure. As it probably had to be: Whitfield explains in the liner notes that his trio partners were chosen for him by Chesky – “All I was being asked to do was show up and play the guitar!” He plays it very well, of course – articulate, relaxed, adept at weaving a melodic line and never straying too far from whichever old warhorse he’s riding at the time. Allison and Drummond are sensitive colleagues and equally adept when given the solo spotlight. If the sound and atmosphere of a club gig that happened half way across the world is what you want to recreate in your living room or in your head on the bus home, this is as authentic as it gets.