In her debut release Laura Andel,  Argentinian-born and now New York- based composer, shows that she is a talent to watch out for. With the help of Elliott Sharp, who recorded the live SomnambulisT suite and mastered two other live short pieces, and many creative soloists - including Tastsuya Nakatani on drums, Reuben Radding on double bass, Jamie Baum on flute and electronics, Oscar Noriega on clarinets, Sam Furnace on saxes and Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet - Andel succeeds in a delivering very thoughtful, imaginative and creative work.

Andel desribes the nine-part SomnambulisT suite, which stretches over 45 minutes, as "surrealities, wandering through near distant paths.. a trace of infinity conceals and unfolds." She combines heavy influences of modern classic music, free improv and a bit of modern tango with the help of accordion player Carl Maguire with subtle electronics and theremin, leaving a lot of space for the excellent improvisers. The ethereal and dreamy, sometimes insomniac, character of this suite ends in a symbolic way with the sound of an alarm clock. The following shorter pieces are performed by the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra from Boston with lesser known soloists. In The Midst ("the simple, magnified in the space of time", according to Andel) and the beautiful "Murmur" ("slow oceans, imperceptibly moving on a dark quiet night, expand and contract") keep the floating character of the longer suite. Sharp's description of Andel's music, in the short liner notes of this disc, is quite accurate: "The end result is a transformation - we may not know the answers but we are left with a new set of mysterious and wonderful questions." Indeed.