While Viktoria Tolstoy’s previous release, My Russian Soul, paid homage to the music of Tchaikovsky and her Russian heritage, Letters to Herbie pays similarly fulsome homage to the peerless Mr Hancock. From the gorgeously sung ballad ‘Chan’s Song’ to the heart-warming duet with Nils Landgren on ‘Give It All Your Heart’, complete with squelchy bass lines and wah-wah guitar, the singer pulls a variety of terrific interpretations out of the bag. Tolstoy wisely steers away from the oft-covered hits – there’s no ‘Cantaloupe Island’ or ‘Watermelon Man’ – and when you have material of the calibre of ‘Trust Me’, ‘I Thought It Was You’ and ‘Butterfly’ from the classic Thrust – a song recently brought to the fore by Gretchen Parlato – you really don’t miss them. The Gothenburg songwriter Anna Alerstedt pens lyrics to three songs, of which the dreamily outerspacious ‘Chemical Residue’ is a standout, while two non-Herbie songs, Coltrane’s ‘Naima’ and Pastorius’ ‘Come On, Come Over’, round things off in impressive style.