A hugely accomplished music theorist as well as a musician who has drawn on his Iranian dastgah as well as American heritage, Modirzadeh has already made two very strong musical and cultural statements with 2012's Post-Chromodal Out and Radif Suite, the 2010 collaboration with Amir Elsaffar, and this latest CD is a worthy successor. The suite in 18 parts is an intricately mapped and absorbing piece of work whose compositional richness is matched by the beauty of its timbres. At the core of the work is the sound of the Ethel string quart, a group that acts as a sinuous, supple spine around which Milli Bermejo's startling voice and Modirzadeh and ElSaffar's fluttering horns knit to good effect. Although drawing largely on Arabic modal traditions, Modirzadeh has developed a personal approach to writing, tuning and arranging that takes him into an excitingly undefined space between non-western folk, European classical music and jazz, where harmony can be intensely dissonant and melodic lines full of teasing micro-tonal richness. While the music occasionally has echoes of Don Cherry, and to a lesser extent Rabih Abou-Khalil, there is a bold lyricism in Modirzadeh's aesthetic that is entirely his and his alone.