Nikolaj Bentzon's father was Niels Viggo Bentzon, one of the most important Danish composers of the twentieth century, a serious man who wrote symphonies and piano sonatas and generally treated music like a discipline. Nikolaj grew up around that seriousness and then went and became a jazz pianist, which in a Copenhagen household like that must have raised an eyebrow or two. He trained classically first, the way a lot of European jazz musicians do, and you can hear that training in his touch — clean, fast, exact — even when he's playing something loose and bluesy.

What makes him fun to listen to is that he never fully let go of the classical side. He's recorded projects built around his father's music, turning those dense modernist piano pieces into something a jazz trio could stretch and breathe inside. It could have been a gimmick, a composer's kid cashing in on the family name, but Bentzon plays it straight — he respects the original material enough to actually improvise on it rather than just dress it up.

As a straight-ahead player he's spent a lot of time with the Danish Radio Big Band and in smaller combos around Copenhagen, working the kind of hard bop and post-bop vocabulary that's been the house style of Danish jazz since the glory days of Montmartre. He's a fluent, muscular player, comfortable at tempo, not a guy who hides behind mood or atmosphere. If you put on one of his trio records expecting something moody and Nordic-cool, you might be surprised at how much he just wants to swing.

He's also spent real time on television and radio in Denmark, which has made him something like a public face for jazz piano there, not just a name on liner notes. That visibility sometimes gets held against serious musicians, but Bentzon's playing holds up fine under scrutiny — technically sharp, well-schooled, unafraid to show off a little when the moment calls for it. He's not reinventing the piano trio format. He's just very good at it, and comfortable enough in his own skin to drag his father's ghost into a jazz club without anyone feeling awkward about it.