Although the premise of this album is a tribute to Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue – commissioned for the 2009 Barcelona jazz festival – it is also the evocation of a certain feline quality in African and latin music, and as such a reminder that those territories have yielded something other than ‘hot’ rhythm. Nonetheless the Cuban pianist, who has indeed run the full gamut of the music of the Black Diaspora in a prolific 20-year career, takes Davis' landmark as a specific conceptual point of departure. Referential song titles – ‘Alternative Sketches’ and ‘So All Freddie’, a sweetly enjoyable meshing of fragments of ‘So What’, ‘All Blues’ and ‘Freddie Freeloader’ – make the source material explicit, as does the faint, airy whispers of Joo Kraus' muted brass, which is used largely as a lead voice throughout. Choosing mostly slow tempos, Sosa reveals an appealing romanticism in both his lightness of touch at the keyboard and the understatement with which he has deployed the not inconsiderable resources at his disposal, although the fire comes out on more than one occasion. As with previous releases, Sosa's originality surfaces in the wholly organic way that some of his Cuban rhythms ease into other related genres such as Jamaican dub or American blues and soul. All the while, Miles' ghost stalks the music by way of elliptical melodic lines that have a graceful melancholy. Perhaps what is missing is a single anthem la ‘All Blues’ to really stand as a centrepiece. But as a series of moods and shades – which is part of the beauty of Kind Of Blue in any case – this is an artistic success.