The head of Jazz at the Royal Academy of Music has released two CDs previously, both tributes, Remembering Nick Drake (2005) and &Louis Armstrong (2006). These two recordings dedicated to radically different geniuses showed Smart adaptive enough to shed some new light on diverse material. An illustration of the colourful national bird of Cuba perches on the sleeve of the trumpeter Nick Smart's new album for the premier UK indie label Babel. It's a slightly obscure indication that Afro-Cuban jazz is central to Nick Smart's new project. There's nothing obscure though about this attractive, convivial recording that's far more on the jazz-latin side than it is latin-jazz. The sextet includes a mix of contemporary world music and jazz musicians including Troyka leader-guitarist Chris Montague, who is a close collaborator of Smart's on Troykestra and as a former member of James Taylor Quartet. Cuban bassist Denny ‘Jimmy’ Martinez, Bangladeshi-London pianist Kishon Khan and London-based percussionist Pete Eckford make up the rest of the cast. There's an arrangement of tunes by a pair of Smart's mentors, Stan Sulzmann and Kenny Wheeler, with the trumpeter's eloquent playing in the ‘classic’ mould especially on the ballad ‘Candela’, adding to an enjoyable 40-minutes worth of music.