Pilon is a young French guitarist prominent in the Paris underground jazz movement after a worthy US stint that included serious study at Berklee. Last October he took part in Whirlwind Records' festival at London's King's Place, leading a quartet with US altoist Logan Richardson, French drummer Gautier Garrigue and London-based US bassist-producer Michael Janisch, who is the only holdover here. Richardson and Garrigue are both strong original musicians but their replacements, Smith and Williams, are unarguable heavyweights whose crisp excellence and all-round maturity lends extra class to this album of smart neo-bop originals and sensitive ballads. Pilon himself is a quick-thinking player with an attractively warm, acoustic-inspired tone that keeps in touch with the age of Wes and Kenny Burrell. His technique is fluent and hardworking, avoiding cheap speed-licks in favour of solid ideas that follow chord-shapes faithfully through the changes. Occasionally his harmonic extensions sound less than totally accurate, but probably for worthy reasons, such as the search for ideas that sound more modern without sacrificing fluency.

Pilon shows admirable awareness of the world around him and his eight originals – make that seven, as ‘Lonely Woman’ is surely by Ornette Coleman – are inspired by interesting sources. The title track refers to a fine-art painting school of the 1950s, ‘Twombly’ is dedicated to US abstract painter Cy of that ilk, and ‘Man on a Wire’ celebrates the daring of Philippe Petit, a French tightrope-walker who crossed from one to the other twin rooftop towers of the doomed World Trade Centre in New York. A DVD of this awesome feat reveals his co-conspirators shedding tears of admiration and sheer horror. Pilon can only be commended for attempting to create music of that emotional breadth.