Will Vinson strips things down to a sax-bass-drums trio following his superb Grammy-nominated electric Trio Grande CD (that included guitarist Gilad Hekselman and drummer Antonio Sanchez). It’s partially breaking new ground for Vinson, at least on record.

Although more at home in acoustic jazz territory, he usually favours formats in which harmony is king and a penchant for guitars. He cheats a bit anyway with the similarly inventive post-bop tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana and him in a persuasively airy dialogue on two out of six tracks: On ‘Things’ they are Konitz-Marsh-ish, in an imaginative twist on that familiar ‘circle of fifths’ delight ‘All the Things You Are’. ‘Fable’ is an exercise in role-switching to an extent. Vinson’s overdubbed sax sounds like a lead guitar, though as with an analogue synth imitating a real instrument, it has a sound uniquely its own and high-calibre bassist Matt Penman plays sensitively vocal-like. Basie’s ‘Blue and Sentimental’ and the standard ‘For All We Know’ are dynamic odes to the swing ballad tradition and his vocalised heart-on-sleeve sax can recall Cannonball (to name perhaps the most central influence here), but with his personal vocabulary having the stylistic span of a Joe Lovano or Chris Potter.

Vinson, with his restless yet elegant phrasing, maintains his allegiance to the lyrical mainstream but with a high level of syntax and wit that combines to outfox the listener. This album, his third for Michael Janisch’s Whirlwind label, testifies to his continued maturity yet impulse to grow creatively as a musical artist.