Where saxophonist/conceptualist Dave Liebman gets his energy from is anybody's guess. His creativity seems to function at full throttle 365 days (and nights) a year. Here he has commissioned Mehmet Ali Sanlikol to come up with a suite of three movements that combine traditional Middle Eastern instrumentation, classical music, and jazz. Sanlikol uses three episodes from Middle Eastern history to explore the theme of how the human spirit ultimately triumphed, despite traumatic times. Liebman is the featured soloist, in essence reflecting the human spirit in both adversity and triumph, and he requested that the music draw from Turkish and Sephardic J ewish musical elements. The expansive tableau that results is a celebration of the global and the glocal – where American jazz (the global) encounters the local (Middle Eastern culture) resulting in original music that is part of the universal language of jazz while celebrating local social and cultural identity. Sanlikol's exemplary compositional and arranging skills have created a context where Liebman rises to the challenge of moving between the American jazz and local musical traditions, from solea patterns in Flamenco music through to microtonal nuances of the Turkish makam mode, all interpreted though the prism of his New York jazz heritage. In concept and execution this is an excellent recording.