Walter Smith III’s second Blue Note release celebrates the saxophonist’s hometown and cultural hub Houston Texas with a clutch of originals and an all-star rhythm section. The composition ‘Cézanne’ flags up a Houston jazz club noted for its listening audience – it was ‘Houston’s Village Vanguard’, according to Smith. And pianist Jason Moran and drummer Eric Harland, like Smith, attended the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, whose many protégées include Robert Glasper and Beyoncé; bassist Reuben Rogers is from The Virgin Isles.

Smith’s lyrical melodies, emotionally rich structures and harmonic sophistication add Texan bite to ideas first developed by Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau. Solos follow the form, compositions flow through contrasting moods and dynamics are built in. Opener ‘Seesaw’ undulates through moments of tension and ease, ‘Gangsterism on Moranish’ moves from the edgy to the serene and ‘24’ delivers rampaging piano and hints of swing. Even the ballad ‘Montrose Nocturne’ builds through spidery Moran piano.

Smith’s strong personal voice on tenor sax combines wispy high notes with a rich middle end and adds slurs to a precise technique. Here, his probing articulacy dovetails neatly with in-form Moran piano, firm Rogers’ bass and Harland’s rattle and clack. He sails through the album’s only cover, Sam Rivers’ ‘Point of Many Returns’ and effortlessly negotiates the helter-skelter unison lines of ‘A Brief Madness’. An enthralling and entertaining set ends with the sax and piano duet ‘Lone Star’ a delicious, closely-worked mixture of the playful and bittersweet.