Jazz is a spontaneous, ephemeral thing: a musical celebration of in-the-momentness, in significant part improvised on the wing. So it's nice to have something to hold on to amid all this fleeting elusiveness – a solid, plain-speaking title that tells it like it is, for instance. Sunday Night at the Vanguard certainly scores on that level. Fred Hersch has been a regular performer at the storied New York venue – 2012's Alive at the Vanguard was also recorded there. This new disc captures a performance from earlier this year (recorded on a Sunday, just in case you were wondering), the set made up, as is customary with this splendid trio, of pop and songbook favourites and Thelonious Monk tunes in addition to Hersch originals. ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’ from South Pacific gets proceedings under way; The Beatles' ‘For No One’ provides a balladic high point midway through; and Monk's ‘We See’ draws the main set to a close, before Hersch returns for a solo encore of his own ‘Valentine’.