A simple and thoroughly effective record, bringing together Cuba's most eminent pianist and one of its redis– covered national-treasure vocalists, this is music to be savoured in a dimly lit Havana lounge bar. Its sounds are redolent of seven-year-old rum on ice and Cohiba smoke, though it works pretty well through the iPod on the Circle Line, with a little imagination. The material consists largely of standards of the 1950s jazzy ballad filin genre, boleros in similar mood, with the odd classic such as Margarita Lecuona's ‘Babalu Aye’ Portuondo is in good voice – better, as always, on the sultrier numbers. Valdes is as liquid and dextrous as ever. Masterfully discreet, he inserts quotes from the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ as is his wont. There's only the occasional luxurious extra, such as a Wynton Marsalis trumpet solo, to intrude on the reverie of piano and voice.