Pianist Tonya Lemoh has tapped into her childhood memories of Africa for her latest album, which takes its inspiration from her late Sierra Leonean father and his work as a paediatrician. “[He] had unshakeable faith in the uniquely precious state of childhood, and the hope of a better future which each new generation represents,” she writes in her sleeve note.

Born in Sydney but also raised in London and Sierra Leone, Lemoh casts a net over four continents – Africa, Europe, America and Australia – for a delightful and often uplifting program of music focusing on childhood. The African contingent comes from three of English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 24 Negro Melodies. Like Lemoh, Coleridge-Taylor’s father was a Sierra Leonean doctor and two of the pieces, They Will Not Lend Me A Child and Oloba, are based on traditional African songs. The third, Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, is a moving arrangement of the well-known spiritual.

She goes on to pay tribute to Coleridge-Taylor in...