Smulyan must be the number one US jazz baritone man these days. As such, he's in ready demand among his peers and is a frequent presence on record. Here, though, he is in that most pared down of situations, the trio, stripped of cover, you might say. All three participants provide the material and as the album title suggests, these 10 pieces each owe their genesis to something else, at times prompted by a melodic extract, and at others by the harmonies of familiar songs. Still, as sleeve writer Neil Tesser suggests, don't let your interest in musical detection get in the way of appreciating the music that results from these intriguing new creations.

Broadly of the Pepper Adams persuasion, Smulyan seems able to rise to any occasion. Witness his breezy attack on Green's grunty ‘Quarter Blues’ over Wong's supple line and the composer's assertive cross­beats. No trouble here for the baritone star in finding plenty to say. His ‘Drink Up’, aka ‘Angel Eyes’, has a loping tempo and a neat shape, Green's fills adding texture as Wong walks, while his ‘Homebody’ opens with a baritone-arco bass theme before Wong solos at length with the bow, and the trio eases into swing. ‘It Happens’ is softer in sound, Smulyan easing back in this nice paraphrase of Legrand's ‘Watch What Happens’ and doing much the same on ‘Good Riddance’, his variation on ‘Sweet and Lovely’. ‘Tritonious’, a nifty harmonic plaything in 3/4 time, has an in-and-out theme in a kind of homage to Monk and some of Smulyan's most adventurous work on the session. Here's a master class in baritone creativity and a prime example of clever trio interplay, All this plus a pleasing set of puzzles for the musicologists.