The piano is a protean instrument, physically expanding in the 19th century to fit Beethoven's bursting imagination, and intimately responding to jazz practitioners’ personalities, Whether Basie and Ellington turning their mighty big band ships with the briefest phrase, Monk's outrageous, angular attack splicing stride with The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, the fragile romance of Bill Evans or the monuments to ego, possibility and beauty of Jarrett's solo canon, the press of fingers on keys brings their souls close.

This compilation offers a cross-section of the last century of popular music, starting with jazz and branching into its R&B tributaries, with a song from each decade played solo by the UK's new generation of jazz pianists, Joe Webb's companionable stride torrents on Irving Ceasar's ‘Crazy Rhythm’ (1928) show the music's sunny, earthy beginnings, By Reuben James’ immersion in Ellington's ‘In My Solitude’ (1934), we are already in the existential, noir territory of velvet nightclub sophistication and downbeat romance, Comparison to the originals often finds these players uncovering the artful skeleton and sinew the piano provided, as Ashley Henry does with Aretha Franklin's ‘Call Me, stripping away the 1970 single's towering gospel vocal to find the minimalist mystery and encoded possibilities in Aretha's piano.

This collection shows the roots which thread through this essentially African-American music, touching European sensibilities and composers through the piano's own history, and connecting Snoop Dogg to Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday (who sang ‘In My Solitude’) to Billie Eilish, It also assembles a prodigious generation of talent capable of continuing that legacy.