I thought the young man cradling a sax on the CD sleeve looked young; almost young enough to be in need of cradling himself. And it turns out that the person pictured – composer, sax blower and quintet leader Sam Barnett – is indeed still only 16 and was but 14 when he penned this five-part suite in homage to his native city of London and its transatlantic first cousin, New York. His brief stay at the latter metropolis inspired him to pen the resonantly plaintive ballad, ‘Liberty’, while floating past the city's great symbol of freedom on the Staten Island ferry. Barnett's a precocious talent, then, who's attended the Royal Academy of Music's Junior Jazz programme and already won two EMI Sound & Music Foundation Awards. Wisely he's decided to pack his quintet with experience – some of his fellow players here are up to 20 years of age, so no wonder it's such a mature set! Actually the writing and playing are astonishingly accomplished, no doubt in part because the members are all great listeners who have imbibed a vast amount of experience from their forebears: the jaggedly winding and unwinding lines and propulsive rhythms of opener ‘Morning Shadowplay’ owe a debt to classic US jazz of the 1960s. London is almost as sharply characterised as New York, and there's a sixth, uncredited and latin-flavoured track, which all adds up to a tremendously impressive debut. It's exciting to think where Barnett and his crew will go next as they discover a distinctive voice of their own.