Many listeners probably woke up to the patiently-spun, dry-toned lines of Texan tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III around 2011, on the Blue Note debut of trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire's sublime quintet – but Smith had already been making records for five years under his own name, often with Akinmusire alongside. Smith can play with Wayne Shorter-like economy and insinuation, but there could hardly be a better testament to his deep immersion in the swing-to-bop tradition than Twio – a session of eight covers and one original, mostly for his own trio, plus Joshua Redman on two tracks, and bassist Christian McBride on four. Smith improvises with an almost Konitz-like upper-register delicacy on ‘Ask Me Now’ (with drummer Eric Harland creatively bustling and rustling around him), Ferde Grofe's early-30s classic ‘On The Trail’ is a wonderful two-tenor contrapuntal feature for Smith and Redman, Wayne Shorter's ‘Adam's Apple' contrastingly spacious and probing, and the wistful mysteries of Jimmy Rowles' ‘The Peacocks’ are savoured by Smith and made faintly ominous by Harland's arrhythmic brushwork. It's a fine session that confirms just how well Walter Smith III grasps the art of pouring old wine into new bottles.