New York pianist Malinverni came over twice last year as MD/accompanist to singer Anaïs Reno for her successful Pizza Express appearances. While here, he recorded this live set with the two musicians he says are known in New York as ‘THE cats’ in London.

Now 67, Malinverni records often as a trio leader and has worked with the best African American leaders since he arrived in the Big Apple in his 20s. He's also an educator and interestingly was Minister of Music at a black church in Brooklyn for 18 years.

His playing exudes typical New York energy, undoubtedly harmonically canny but percussive too, as he makes his point. He opens with ‘A Foggy Day’, building nicely, chorded figures contrasted with vigorous right-hand variations, the ideas quick to appear, Green soloing before the ride-out. ‘Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho’ gets quite a shake-up, Malinverni's chunky chords yielding to Brown's plentiful drum breaks. Malinverni's sole vocal sets up ‘My Ideal’, his handling of the theme quite spare, even momentarily Monk-ish, a facet of his style which re-appears with Bernstein's ‘The Jet Song’: the more he digs in, the more Monk he seems to find.

This nine-song recital is pleasingly balanced between the quietly lyrical and the happily rumbustious, with Malinverni's entrances and exits cleverly conceived. Thus ‘Star Eyes’ has a semi-Latin feel at first before he unleashes his inner bebopper, this venerable piece given quite a torrid time. His ‘Brown and Green’ is for his accompanists whom he describes as ‘two very bad men with whom I find an easy rapport’. Make of that what you will but it's clear that these three certainly did find that rapport: value, too.