For his first album in eight years, Roberts takes a complex, painstaking look at the musical relationship between the world's two greatest jazz cities, New Orleans and New York. The pianist has recorded renditions of nearly all these dozen songs before — in the case of Duke Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy," more than once. But it's as an arranger where Roberts is his most intrepid. There's a kaleidoscopic quality to Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer," and Jelly Roll Morton's "Jungle Blues" as well as "Fantasy."

There are plenty of subtle Latin inflections too, including the rhythm groove by bassist Roland Guerin and drummer Jason Marsalis that underscores "Jitterbug Waltz." Roberts 'sophisticated harmonizing recalls Ahmad Jamal in a section (after Roberts 'gorgeous largo intro) of Joplin's "A Real Slow Drag." The crowd-pleaser of the bunch is probably "Honeysuckle Rose," featuring a pair of dazzling solos from Guerin amid the playful counterpoint. Monk is represented by "In Walked Bud" and a distinctively reflective-cum-rumbling "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are," which leads into the lone original, "Searching For the Blues," taken first as brisk hard-bop and then wending its way through Roberts 'acute scholarship involving blues and Latin tinges.