It is rare to hear a male choir in jazz, not even in Frank Sinatra's Christmas songs. But Noé Huchard's album Young And Fine is a far cry from that. Not only does the choir exude a touch of Creole vibes, the music itself is a potpourri of possible forms of articulation.

Noé Huchard is one of France's rising stars of young jazz. The 26-year-old studied at the Paris Conservatoire and has already played with several jazz greats, partly because he is very present in Parisian jazz clubs.

With his trio consisting of himself, bassist Clément Daldosso and drummer Donald Kantomanou, Huchard has now recorded 13 fresh songs that offer a good 55 minutes of high-quality entertainment.

The aforementioned piece with the choir opens the ears and, ironically, is titled Enough, even though it leaves you wanting more. Here, as elsewhere, it is sometimes difficult to say to what extent irony played a role in the choice of titles.

Too Many Options, for example, moves across and beyond genre boundaries, all of which lie in the land of unlimited possibilities, in jazz land, where there is pretty much everything that instruments can produce in terms of sound, from hard bop to big band and smooth jazz to experimental sound experiments. Of course, Huchard does not prefer to reach for the shelf of musical oddities. It is more of a mélange of different stylistic elements, sometimes combined, sometimes juxtaposed, which charge the pieces with a special atmosphere and invite the listener to listen.

And those who listen will enjoy a piano solo in Those Guys, be greeted once again by a choir in Gotta Get Away, only to be pushed out of their armchairs in the ensuing whirlwind of sound in the up-tempo number, while Withering, with its dense atmosphere and meditative quality, allows them to sink back into the cushions. ¿Is El Chungo OK? features a harpsichord. Anhedonia satisfies the longing for a quiet ballad, while the title track Young And Fine sends farewell greetings spiced with ragtime.

The range covered by the three CNSM graduates is undoubtedly impressive. And the acoustics of the album are also impressive. The instruments sound completely natural and are arranged in a very orderly fashion on stage. Where appropriate, however, the sound engineer also uses the possibilities to shift the balance, create backgrounds from which something creeps up, set focus lights and maintain and intensify the tension between harmony and event.

This mixture of skill on the instruments and at the mixing desk makes Noé Huchard's latest album what its title promises: Young And Fine. (Thomas Semmler, HighResMac)

Noé Huchard, piano
Clément Daldosso, double bass
Donald Kontomanou, drums