Will Vinson, an alto sax specialist originally from London who moved to New York exactly two decades ago, has managed to build a solid, lasting reputation in the Big Apple’s notoriously competitive environment.

Anyone who’s seen him live will be aware he’s a match for any one of the top-notch names featured on his new CD Four Forty One. This is a compilation of recordings mostly from 2017-18 dedicated to Vinson’s love of jazz piano; all are in trio format aside from an earlier 2015 duo date with Afro-Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Often it’s his pianistic partners that provide the originality of context while Vinson is clearly rooted, though not stuck, in assertive, warmly penetrating Bird-inspired alto.

On non-originals, Fred Hersch’s exquisitely nuanced harmonies underlie the soprano sax-led Bryn Roberts ballad ‘KW’ and he’s Tristano to Vinson’s Konitz on their edition of the Monk-penned ‘Work’. Elsewhere Sullivan Fortner, Cécile McLorin Salvant’s dazzling duo pianist, wraps his adventurous effervescence around John Lewis’ ‘Milestones’ and idiosyncratic Armenian star Tigran’s delicately filigree phrases jumps out of the speakers on a version of Keith Jarrett’s ‘Oasis’; here Vinson inevitably takes a more mournful, modal approach, but his strengths lie elsewhere. His originals are equally engaging with soulful, high-quality performances from front to back.