The Guardian

★★★

With 2008’s Trapeze, Georgia Mancio showed she is so much more than just another laidback Latin jazz and standards singer. With dynamic drummer Dave Ohm and inventive improvisers, notably flute virtuoso Gareth Lockrane, Mancio made a distinctive mark.

Silhouette is a step further on, opening with a confident subversion of expectations, a slow daydream for voice, Lockrane’s deep flute and a pensive piano solo from Kate Williams. Pat Metheny’s Question and Answer is reinvented as Question the Answer, there are pieces of swaying samba-jazz, and Tom Waits’s Take It With Me is an uncluttered vehicle for his words, cello and bass. An Anita O’Day syllable-shaking approach to Just in Time, a shift on TransOceanica from the elegaic to the jazzily upbeat (a scat opportunity for guest Ian Shaw), a painterly rendering of Jobim’s Modinha, and some atmospheric hymnal close-harmony on the returning title track are all part of this unassuming leader’s sophisticated evolution. Williams shares piano duties with the comparably classy John Pearce and Tim Lapthorn.