Veteran trumpeter Charles Tolliver came to London in the 1960s as a member of Max Roach's group, but he was leading the band himself last winter at the Jazz Café. This studio session was done in the days that followed, showing the pedigree of musicians whose wealth of experience is simply mouthwatering. Tolliver, with his formative years marked by gigs with legends such as Andrew Hill and McCoy Tyner as well as Roach, is an assured and measured soloist while Buster Williams and Lenny White, both of whom made noted contributions to the historic works of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, make for a formidable drums-bass axis, negotiating the twists and turns of Tolliver's carefully mapped compositions with aplomb, hitting the blues hard when necessary and creating a sturdy swing elsewhere.

It is a fine consolidation of the vocabulary the trumpeter has devised over five decades, which is a deeply touching take on hard bop and modal jazz whereby the themes are soulfully yearning, none more so than the gorgeous sway of ‘Emperor March’, while the unison lines and improvisations from altoist Jesse Davis and local tenor man Binker Golding are also a plus point. At the age of 78, Tolliver has deserved elder statesman status, and this is the kind of cultured work, with intellect and emotion in symbiosis, that befits an artist who has contributed a great deal to modern music during a lengthy, eventful career.