Tocororo

This young Cuban jazz pianist's third album starts with a radical reinvention of the old Compay Segundo favourite, ‘Chan Chan’: all plucked piano, clarinet and skittish time signatures. It segues into the brisk ‘Yemayá’, with guest vocals from the French-Cuban twin-sister duo Ibeyi. Bassist Richard Bona's gorgeous vocals add colour to Rodriguez's nimble playing on the next track, ‘Raíces (Roots)’, and Ibrahim Maalouf's signature trumpet graces both ‘Venga la Esperanza’ and ‘Kaleidoscope’. The musicianship and production – by Quincy Jones, no less – are impeccable, but the music wanders so restlessly, from Afro-Cuban music to Bach and back via flamenco and tango, that there's the sense that this is an album in search of a theme. Significantly, things conclude with a remix of the deceptively simple ‘Ay Mamá Inés’, as if to underline that it's the strongest track.

It would be easy to lump Alfredo Rodriguez with Omar Sosa and Roberto Fonseca simply because he is a Cuban pianist who plays a form of world jazz. This often beautiful album confirms that he clearly has his own identity – even if it seems that he has yet to find his musical personality.