Canada-born pianist Renee Rosnes (an associate over the years with stars as big as Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and Bobby Hutcherson) doesn't dominate the jazz headlines, but her work as a leader exhibits a rare ability to convey strong, often autobiographical emotion while still keeping spontaneity, compelling melody, and immersion in the jazz tradition paramount. She leads a classy quintet on Beloved of the Sky, a venture inspired by the work of landscape painter Emily Carr, an evocative critic of Canada's deforestation. The zigzagging, urgent ‘Elephant Dust’ splices staccato rhythmic figures and open swing to release boiling uptempo runs and brittle, ducking-anddiving atonalism from long-time collaborator Chris Potter on tenor, while Lenny White's drums thrash and snap. ‘Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky’ (the title of a Carr painting) is a rippling, pensive and lyrical vehicle for Potter's soprano and the leader's gracefully songlike piano variations, and vibraphonist Steve Nelson delivers a shapely homage to Bobby Hutcherson on the kaleidoscopic ‘Mirror Image’. Rosnes’ ‘Rhythm of the River’ is a quietly rapturous ebb and flow on which Nelson surfs and glides, and the Maurice Sendakentitled ‘Let the Wild Rumpus Start’ is a hard-punctuated bluesy swinger that closes the album out in a percussive storm. As a balance of personal reflectiveness and blistering post-bop vigour, Beloved of the Sky vividly catches the quietly purposeful Renee Rosnes’ muse in flight.