Following love letters to Paris (J'ai Deux Amours) and Mali (Red Earth), for her latest release the great Dee Dee Bridgewater focuses her gaze on New Orleans in the company of the superb New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO) and its artistic Director, trumpet player and vocalist, Irvin Mayfield. Beginning with the amazingly grooving pocket of drummer Adonis Rose on ‘One Fine Thing’, it's a magical amalgam of new and old material, with the latter including imaginative reworkings of iconic songs as ‘What A Wonderful World’, heard here as a sumptuous ballad, and ‘St James Infirmary’. NOJO and Bridgewater are clearly meant for each other, the band revelling in the sheer ebullience of the music and Bridgewater swashbuckling her way through the material with enormous exuberance and expressive warmth. Highlights of the spectacular arrangements by different members of the band include the irresistibly funky banjo playing of Don Vappie on ‘Big Chief’, a duet for Bridgewater and Dr John, the purely percussive backdrops and multilayered vocals of ‘Congo Square’ and the title track, plus a drop dead gorgeous take on ‘Come Sunday’ (from Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige suite). I can't imagine hearing a more passionate and spirited album this year.