Jeremy Monteiro's jazz album for Verve features Eugene Pao

Artists in the Verve stable include Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie and many more. To have an album released on the label is a feather in the cap for any jazz artist, and Singaporean composer and keyboardist Jeremy Monteiro, who was in town last week, is delighted his latest work, Jazz-Blues Brothers, has been picked up by the company.

The album is a joint project with Italian organist Alberto Marsico, a disciple of "Brother" Jack McDuff, who has the same assured command of the blues. Monteiro, a notable jazz and blues organist, here plays the piano. Regular associate Eugene Pao takes the guitar, alongside Asia-based American drummer Shawn Kelley and saxophonist Shawn Letts. Marsico handles the bass on organ. They are augmented by guest vocalist Rani Singam, who wrote lyrics to go with Marsico's instrumental piece, Lou.

It is, Monteiro says, "one of the best albums I have ever done, probably up there with my other favourite, the album I recorded with Al Foster, Charlie Haden and Ernie Watts, Always in Love".

The two keyboardists complement each other beautifully, and seemingly effortlessly. A small group with organ, piano, guitar and saxophone could easily have become cluttered, but the music here never does. "We hardly rehearsed playing together and it sounded like we had rehearsed for tens of hours to get it to a point where we weren't in each other's way," Monteiro says.

Pao features prominently, playing some funky blues and demonstrating his ballad mastery on the Beatles classic Here, There and Everywhere, the album's only cover tune. Most of the originals reflect a strong blues influence. "You can't have jazz without the blues," says Monteiro, who spent his teens playing fusion, but recalls his jazz guitarist father drilling into him the importance of staying blues-grounded.

"During a set I will always play a down-home blues. With the exception of Here, There and Everywhere and Monk in the Mountain, a number I wrote with Eugene, it's all blues."

There's a strong gospel influence on opening track Mount Olive, which was inspired by a 100-piece gospel choir at a Baptist church, heard in the company of the original Ramsey Lewis Trio rhythm section, bassist Eldee Young and drummer Isaac "Redd" Holt; Monteiro played with both musicians for 20 years. Young died in 2007. Holt is still drumming in Chicago.