Pianist Jason Rebello’s years with Sting and Jeff Beck were sometimes portrayed as a big loss to a UK scene on which he had made such an impact as a wunderkind in the early 90s. But on the evidence of Rebello’s latest personal statement since his pop retirement, those years never blunted his improv reflexes. In fact, they refined the songwriter’s ear that gives such broad appeal to a fine solo piano album, all original songs apart from the Beatles’ Blackbird. The unwavering left-hand ostinato and delicate melody of the Brad Mehldau-esque Pearl never loses its shape for all the gymnastics of Rebello’s variations and the title track has the seductive lightness of a classic ballad, but with an Eric Satie-like skew to its harmony. The headlong improv on Blackbird, meanwhile, is always locked into the contours of the song, and the pianist’s timbre and touch on slow pieces strikingly refreshes the familiar piano-ballad arts. It isn’t cutting-edge music, but it’s classic jazz-making very personally reappraised.
