Celestial Circle ECM****

Led by the great percussionist Marilyn Mazur, Celestial Circle is the stellar quartet with John Taylor (piano), Josefine Cronholm (voice) and Anders Jormin (bass), that names this CD. Mazur, a jazz musician with a kind of supra-national world folk feel, sets the exquisitely nuanced tone of the group's music, and it's striking how well her individual colleagues buy into it. Delicate and understated, full of tensile strength, it's a world of sculpted sounds that references echoes of Scandinavia, North Africa, India, the Caribbean and the Orient, while holding firmly within the jazz fold. Not all of it succeeds – some short free pieces work well, others seem aimless prologues in search of a subject – but at its best, in the sparse perfection of compositions such as the bleak Winterspell, the gorgeous Temple Chorus, Antilope Arabesque(sic), Tour Songand Drumrite, it's magnificent. See ecmrecords.com