It’s 19 years since Michael Weiss’s last recording, from a time when he seemed to be everywhere, after he won the Thelonious Monk Piano Competiiton in 1989. Many readers will recall his long association with Johnny Griffin, and he has an impressive list of credits, also having headlined all the major jazz clubs in his home city of New York. The album title rightly hints that he’s been hard at it maintaining his career ever since, and what we get here is a very good mainstream album. Eric Alexander is, as ever, inventive and dependable, and Weiss’s accompanying trio shift from Latin to straightahead (more than once within a single number) with aplomb. A case in point is ‘Après Vous’ loosely based on ‘After You’ve Gone’, which prompts Alexander to some of his most hard-blowing solo playing once the regular metre returns. Weiss also solos fluently here showing his penchant for flowing right hand runs. It’s good to hear Fats Waller’s ‘Jitterbug Waltz’ getting a 21st century makeover, although it settles into something closer to 6/8 than 3/4, above which Alexander produces one of his most abstract solos. Overall an enjoyable, swinging album that draws on the tradition without ever sounding dated.