Tom Ollendorf is making his quiet way towards ubiquity, all in the most charmingly well-manicured way imaginable. His appeal is not hard to understand: a combination of fearsome musical chops, ambitiously sophisticated compositional sensibility and an unashamedly tuneful upbeat musical personality is very hard to resist, as the many fans of Pat Metheny will testify. The comparison is inevitable, given Ollendorf's proclivity for matching a clean tone and flawless articulation with a sunny, pastoral sense of melody that strays towards the folk-Americana (on ‘Three Bridges’) or the bossa-ish (on ‘Carnival’), but to make too much of such parallels would be unfairly reductive: knotty originals like ‘Istanbul’ and a ferocious meter-twisting deconstruction of ‘Airegin’ show that Mr Ollendorf is very much his own man.

This second release teams him with the equally immaculately-groomed US hot property Ben Wendel: an international endorsement of the respect Ollendorf can already command among his peers. Wendel's precision and poise make him a natural match for Ollendorf's melodic approach, and his very contemporary harmonic sophistication complements the leader's quietly determined explorations into more adventurous territory: both elements can be heard on ‘Passing Ships’ as it mutates from poppy ballad to spacey outro. Conor Chaplin and Marc Michel are the perfect rhythm team, supple, sophisticated, soloing or supportive exactly on cue.

The masterful solo rendition of ‘My Foolish Heart’ is a good primer for anyone wanting to check out the forefront of contemporary jazz fingerstyle. Striking a very accommodating balance between the accessible and the challenging, ambitiously conceived and perfectly realised, this release should do much to help Tom on his inevitable rise to the most politely accommodating sort of world domination.