Pianist Frank Woeste won praise for his first Pocket Rhapsody album in 2016. Now he's back with Pocket Rhapsody II, which actually features some of the same tunes. But if anything, the return to the title track and ‘Mirage’ only reinforces how Woeste has evolved. The treatments are very different, as are the personnel delivering them. The first album featured the Americans Ben Monder (guitar) and Justin Brown (drums). The current group is European and gives more space to horns: alongside the rhythm section of Julien Herné and Stéphane Galland, trombonist Robinson Khoury from Lyon and Dutch trumpeter Eric Vloeimans both make neat contributions to this deeply atmospheric, moodily electric set. Woeste meanwhile coaxes a splendid range of sounds and emotions from piano, synths and Fender Rhodes.

‘I am strongly influenced by the particular way jazz has always been viewed in France, as music that can blend well with other forms – world music, French music… There is a freedom here to take the jazz language, to adapt it and find one's own way,’ he has said, and there's certainly an adaptive, rhapsodic inspiration that runs through the set here (the last part of ‘Triptyque’ reminds me of Air, which is no bad thing). There's even room for a children's choir – the Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine – which features Woeste's son Oscar.