When last heard from, teenage smooth-jazz pianist Nicholas Cole had just missed hitting the top-10, peaking at No. 11 on Billboard's jazz-songs chart last November. But the Goldsboro native has cleared that hurdle with his latest release, "Between Us," from the upcoming album "Endless Possiblities" (out Sept. 11 on the Sony-distributed label Cutmore Records).

In its third week, "Between Us" cracks the top-10 by climbing three notches to No. 8 on the Aug. 25 jazz-songs chart -- on its way to the toppermost of the jazzermost.
 

Goldsboro keyboardist Nicholas Cole's smooth-jazz instrumentals show all sorts of unexpected influences, including a fair quantity of middle-of-the-road pop from before he was born. But one of the least-likely might be George Winston. Cole's album "A Journey of One" closes with a track called "A Song For Taylor (The Finale)," a quietly meditative reverie that sounds like it could have been on Winston's 1982 new-age signpost "December." It's a song Cole wrote for his cousin.

"Taylor was 6 when I wrote that," Cole says. "Her father, my uncle, had just passed away. It's a lullaby to her, almost like a comfort song. He had four daughters & I want them all to have their own song for their father because each had a specific & different relationship with him. I started with her. She's 8 now & loves her song."

For more on the teenage Cole's music and his surprising chart success, see the profile in Sunday's paper.