Cyrus Chestnut: A Million Colors in Your Mind

There’s nothing quite like the sound of pianist Cyrus Chestnut hammering his way through a five chord in a climactic turnaround, as if to underscore his abiding affection for blues and gospel traditions. It evokes images of a smiling slugger rounding third and heading home, having just deposited a ball somewhere in the upper deck.

You’ll find examples of that on A Million Colors in Your Mind, but as its title suggests, his latest recording is a many-hued thing. Several years ago, when Chestnut devoted an album to hits associated with Elvis Presley, he proved that he has both the imagination and harmonic wherewithal to redeem pop songs that once became too ubiquitous for their own good. He pulls off something similar here when he shrewdly reconfigures and reharmonizes the Lionel Richie ballad “Hello.”