Records

Misha Alperin: First Impressions (ECM). Anyone lucky enough to have seen a concert by the Moscow Art Trio will know that the group's co-leader, the 42-year-old Ukrainian pianist Alperin, is an incredible talent. This beautiful album, recorded at the famous Rainbow Studio in Oslo, is a kind of homage to the great tradition of previous ECM recordings of Northern European jazz. The music, for a sextet featuring John Surman, Jon Christensen, and Alperin's Moscow colleague Arkady Shilkloper, is as pellucid as one would expect, and

Surman's passionate saxophone warms up the otherwise rather cold and neo-classical style.