My recent survey of jazz is not just a stroll down Memory Lane. Taking a cue from Jazz at Lincoln Center, I want to swing into the twenty-first century, and I’ve discovered a few new jazz musicians whose work I enjoy. The pianist David Leonhardt is one of them.

Liner notes point out that Leonhardt has thirty years of professional experience in recordings, TV, and radio, having played in North and South America, the Near and Middle East, and at fancy venues in France, Italy, Canada, and China. Okay, okay, so he’s been around. He’s still new to me. I find that his new CD The David Leonhardt Jazz Group Plays Gershwin (Big Bang Records 9569) is charming and lighthearted, and it lifts my spirits. He has good sidemen on bass, sax, and drums and a good vocalist in Nancy Reed, but it is the solo work of pianist Leonhardt himself that enchants me. His rendition of Gershwin’s But Not for Me will spur me to find more Leonhardt recordings.