You wait ages for a new record from the great Sheila Jordan, and along come two at once. Obviously, the anticipation has been heightened by the first-ever release last year of her debut promo recording done in 1960 (reviewed in Jazzwise 268), and she was already 31 by then. That she's in her 93rd year when creating these complementary albums provides an obvious explanation for an initial perception of her apparently diminished abilities – and comparison with the 15-years-junior Joni Mitchell's sudden re-appearance is irrelevant, since Sheila never had that kind of pure folksy sound in the first place.

What she did have, from early on, was a died-in-the-wool jazz phraseology whose tone clearly reflected her admiration of improvising instrumentalists, such as her hero Charlie Parker. Intonation was never her strongest point, so the occasionally wayward approach here is evidence of a lack of concern, rather than lack of energy.

There's only one overlap of material between these albums, the track called ‘The Bird and Confirmation’ (its first half a composed “improvisation” on ‘Embraceable You’) and, perhaps coincidentally, each album includes two purely instrumental items. The fact that the trioTrio members are less well-known than Broadbent and Harvie S doesn’t imply any lack of quality.

The Steeplechase has standards as well as Kenny Dorham's ‘Fair Weather’ (famous for its use in Round Midnight) and another Jordan original, ‘The Crossing’, while the album done at the Mezzrow club has different standards plus Abbey Lincoln's ‘Bird Alone’. The latter set inaugurates the Smalls’ Live Living Masters series, and suffers a bit from the unforgiving spotlight of live performance but Jordan's undeniable presence and her occasional interactions with the audience turn this into a positive. The trioTrio collaboration, apparently done in a single studio day, seems more polished and marginally more careful, which may please some listeners better.