Milestone birthdays deserve major events. And so we have Franco Ambrosetti's Cheers, a star-studded seventy-fifth birthday celebration that's both a walk down memory lane with friends and a stroll over different terrain for the man of the moment.

In January of 2017, just over a month after Ambrosetti's actual birthday, the septuagenarian starring man found himself at the center of a musical party in his honor at Brooklyn's Systems Two Studios. There, surrounded by most impressive company, he wielded his flugelhorn and traced his way through a collection of songs with the fluid grace that's come to characterize his work on a series of celebrated dates stretching back nearly four decades on the ENJA imprint.

Joining forces with a set of familiar faces—A-listers that have appeared on record and/or on stages with this Italian horn heavy over the years—Ambrosetti delivers a program that's neither mired in nostalgia nor taken by fashion's fickle outlook. An intelligent mix of recalibrated standards and originals suited to this setting makes for a beautiful listen with plenty of peaks and no valleys to speak of. An "Autumn Leaves" bolstered by