Pianist Gallon’s second disc as leader puts him in ‘grand company’ indeed, but he is no stranger to the work of his illustrious colleagues, the three of them having played together in Carter’s various groups in the late 1980s.

There’s a slight sense here of Gallon trying a bit too hard on the handful of standards in the collection to make them sound fresh, the uneven opening of the first track ‘Drop Me Off In Harlem’ being a case in point. But where he scores is in his original compositions. The brisk delights of ‘Acting Up’ contrasts with the cleverly evoked mysterious atmosphere of ‘Zombette’, while the slow-paced ‘Two Track Mind’ harks back to the blues tradition. On this piece in particular Ron Carter shows how to shape an exemplary bassline, every note sounding right, but not always being the one you'd expect, and as a bonus his solo is beautifully shaped, and complements the originality of the piano work.

Nash follows this with a drum solo that shows he’s picked up plenty of the rhythmic nuances from the solos of the other two. The last original on the album ‘Monkey Bars’ hovers between 6/8 and 3/4 time, but it keeps up the vein of originality that runs through Gallon’s writing, and eases us gently into the best-played standard on the record, ‘Old Folks’. Overall it shows a pianist who deserves to be recognised as ‘grand company’ himself.