Heart of the Matter is a logical continuum of Shapes and Round Silence in its use of subtle electronic tone colours and well conceived moods that perfectly judges the direction of travel jazz has to follow if it wants to retain an audience beyond its true believers. This is music that can find a space in people's lives because it is functional. It can be ‘used’ as subtle background music but at a higher volume can also be ‘used’ as sophisticated foreground music because it yields a wealth of inner detail and subtle musicianship (which accounts for the enduring appeal of Kind Of Blue for over half a century – how many people have made love to ‘Flamenco Sketches’ or ‘All Blues’ over the years? – and most of Creed Taylor's productions on the CTI label). In today's jazz context is all: here there are no declamatory horn solos that go on way too long that may or may not relate to the melodic material at hand; melody and the development of melody are all since the soloist functions within the context of the overall mood of the composition. Haffner engages the emotions rather than providing the vicarious excitement of a cutting contest. So here is music with engaging melodies realised by subtle arrangements full of interesting touches, such as the haunting wordless vocals that rise and recede from the mix (and the memorable performance of bass baritone Thomas Quasthoff on ‘Melodia del Viento’); the crafty allusions to world music and an exemplary less-is-more trumpet solo by Till Brönner on ‘Here's to Life’ (the only non-Haffner composition on the album). But, and there is always a ‘but’ these days, since one of the best albums of 2008, and of the last five years, was Haffner's Acoustic Shapes that brilliantly re-imagined seven tracks from his electronically influenced Shapes (plus the track ‘Star’), by an acoustic trio comprising of Cologne's Hubert Nuss on piano and Sweden's Lars Danielsson on bass, it poses the question of whether the Haffner-Nuss-Danielsson triumvirate could recreate the magic again by re-imagining the Heart of the Matter compositions in the way they did the Shapes tracks. After all, Haffner had a trio here that sounded as if it was going places.