This was the third instalment of an ambitious six-week autumn series at the Jazz Bar that�s offering Scottish debuts for talents from across the jazz spectrum as well as Edinburgh dates on tours by familiar visitors.

Star rating ***
This was the third instalment of an ambitious six-week autumn series at the Jazz Bar that's offering Scottish debuts for talents from across the jazz spectrum as well as Edinburgh dates on tours by familiar visitors. New York pianist Lenore Raphael was a new name to me, although she has a long CV, including work with such notables as trumpeter Clark Terry and saxophonist Illinois Jacquet and is very active in jazz education.

In town partly to give a jazz masterclass at Edinburgh School of Music, she revealed herself as a player who can swing hard and play ballads with bluesy sensitivity.

She was in the classic jazz blind date situation here, meeting bassist Brian Shiels and drummer Ken Mathieson just beforehand, and if they took time to get to know each other, Raphael was also able to assert her personality in the process.

The repertoire was all jazz standards but, without being wildly radical, Raphael gives items such as Alone Together and Yesterdays a new perspective, be it in the emphatic riffs that introduced both tunes or in a sly, swingtime to latin tempo shift in the former that didn't quite convince this time. She also has a playful sense of humour, pointing out that Yesterdays was Jerome Kern's plural reflection, not the Beatles' singular one, then quoting the Fab Four in her solo.

Influences from her classical upbringing feature, too, although just how big a part Oscar Peterson played in her taking up jazz might have been deduced from her big swinging take on There Is No Greater Love, wherein any lingering nerves and unfamiliarity disappeared briskly.