For his second release on his own Heartcore Records, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel offers an intimate, yet deeply expansive instrumental trio album. Angels Around is a nice contrast to 2017's Brazilian-influenced Caipi, which found Rosenwinkel both singing and playing many of his own original pieces. Here, he delves into a more straightforward, if no less exploratory jazz standards setting, tackling a handful of lesser-played compositions with some originals sprinkled in. Joining him are Italian bassist Dario Deidda and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. Both Deidda and Hutchinson bring a wealth of experience to the session. Deidda has played with such Italian luminaries as singer Fiorella Mannoia and trumpeter Enrico Rava, and his warm, robust sound brings to mind contemporaries like Christian McBride and veterans like Dave Holland. Similarly, Hutchinson has been a first-call player for decades, and his roiling, textured style is the perfect foil for Rosenwinkel's sparkling, far-eyed improvisational lines. Together, they play a harmonically textured post-bop that evokes the electrified '70s jazz of guitarist Pat Martino. Rosenwinkel's guitar, steeped in neon-toned effects, has a golden, diamond-tipped aura that still shimmers with an organic, vocal-like essence. He reworks Thelonious Monk's "Ugly Beauty" into a fluid, afterglow number made buoyant by Deidda and Hutchinson's groovy, Latin-fusion underpinnings. Yet more straightahead is the trio's upbeat reading of Paul Chambers' architectural blues "Ease It." Particularly ear-grabbing is the trio's effusive take on Joe Henderson's "Punjab," its far-eyed modal angularity pushed ever skyward by Rosenwinkel's searing improvisational lines. Elsewhere, they sink with doomy resonance into Charles Mingus' slow ballad "Self Portrait in Three Colors," and dive with red-eyed focus into the funky, Larry Coryell-esque original "Simple #2." Rosenwinkel got his start in the '90s playing with older veterans like Paul Motian, the aforementioned Henderson, and Gary Burton. Angels Around feels like an album any one of those players might have recorded in their prime, and one which speaks to Rosenwinkel's ever-maturing sound. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi

1		Ugly Beauty
2		Ease It
3		Self Portrait in Three Colors
4		Simple No. 2
5		Punjab
6		Time Remembered
7		Angels Around