Shai Maestro is the most acclaimed of all the pianists to have warmed the piano stool for the Israeli star bassist Avishai Cohen. He has recorded four high profile albums for perhaps Cohen’s strongest contemporary trio that includes the NYC-based drummer Mark Guiliana, with whom he has also worked in quartet. The 31-year-old Israeli released a well-received debut in 2012 and this is his first for ECM alongside original member Jorge Roeder on bass and his NY-based compatriot Ofri Nehemya, a drums prodigy and fellow Cohen alumni. The Debussy-like dreamscape title-track and solo piano piece ‘Choral’ mixes Bach-ish variations with Maestro’s Semitic roots complementing the more rhythmically exuberant ‘New River, New Water’. A tantalisingly personal solo piano take on the Strachey-Marvell classic ‘These Foolish Things’, one of two non-originals, it includes Maestro’s vocal grunts to remind us of the influence of ECM’s stellar pianist. There’s added poignancy at the coda: ‘What Else Needs to Happen’ is a tribute to colleague and fellow jazz musician Jimmy Greene’s daughter who lost her young life in the 2012 Sandy Hook Massacre. The trio’s musical commentary is appropriately stark as it switches the listener’s attention to the samples lifted from ex-president Obama’s speeches on gun control.