Venezuela-born, US-based pianist-composer Edward Simon is, according to JazzTimes, “less talked about than many other important jazz pianists from the Caribbean and South America… though he may be the most complete creative artist among them.” Certainly, Sorrows & Triumphs, with its massed instrumental forces and deep lines of influence and study (numerology, Buddhism), is the kind of work that only a very accomplished musical thinker could essay. Indeed, it's such a mightily ambitious and intricately filigreed project it seems astonishing you can compress it all onto a little CD, and a single one at that. But that's the wonder of modern technology for you. Here Simon supplements his regular quartet Afinidad, which features saxophonist David Binney, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade, variously with classical group Imani Winds and guests including Gretchen Parlato, who provides her own lyrics on a few numbers. They perform, in re-sequenced, remixed form, material from two of Simon's earlier suites, Sorrows and Triumphs and House of Numbers, plus a number originally written for the SFJAZZ Collective. The results are sonically rich, and perhaps at their best when the instrumental sumptuousness is most expressively focused, as on ‘Chant’, with its splendid Parlato vocal, or on the hypnotic ‘Triumphs’.