Bourbon Street #1

Set against the warm, honeyed tones of New Orleans atmosphere, this 2011 French-language album from Bamboo Édition draws you straight into its world with a beautifully composed cover: a low-angle view looking down at a pair of polished two-tone wingtip shoes, a battered trumpet resting on a wooden surface, and a small photograph of a woman lying on the floor between them. Philippe Charlot and Alexis Chabert's Les Fantômes de Cornelius promises jazz, mystery, and memory woven together in equal measure. It's the kind of opening image that holds its breath — full of questions about who wore those shoes, whose face is in that photograph, and what that trumpet has seen.