Kuára: Psalms and Folk Songs ECM****

The Finnish duo of drummer Markku Ounaskari and pianist Samuli Mikkonen have moved freely across musical idioms in their work. Now, in this movingly effective piece of genre-busting, they bring a palpable affinity to the Russian psalms and Finnish-related Karelian, Udmurtian and Vepsian folk songs of nearby Russian lands. They’re joined on some tracks by the trumpet and extraordinary wordless vocalisations of Norwegian Per Jørgensen, another player open to change. The melancholy, otherwordly music that results is both starkly simple and profound, in which the silences are as significant as the textures created by the lucid duo and trio dialogues. Behind the simplicity, however, is an immense sense of openness, which is given notable coherence by the extraordinary rapport and focus of the joint improvisations of Ounaskari and Mikkonen in particular. See classical.ie