The Enrico Pieranunzi-Marc Johnson-Joey Baron piano trio's jazz explorations of the film scores of Ennio Morricone were so well received when they were first released in 2003, it's little wonder that Cam Jazz has now seen fit to unify the set and reissue it in slightly augmented form (two tracks recorded in Tokyo in 2004 have been added). Morricone – whose output for the silver screen stretches well beyond ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and is hardly less significant in cinematic terms than that of fellow Italian Nino Rota, who worked with Fellini – has written countless themes worthy of improv-led reinterpretation, and jazz performers are always hungry for new standards to embroider and recast. The result is a satisfying examination of the composer's back catalogue, with the lyrically inclined Pieranunzi and his collaborators offering a keenly nuanced tour of the Italian master's voluminous canon.