Since making his home in London first to take up a full scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in 2005, Russian Yuyiy Galkin has been winning awards for his compositions for nonet. In 2007 a piece of his was played on a tour by Tim Garland’s Northern Underground Orchestra and in 2010 the Dankworth Composition Prize encouraged him even more. This is the debut and a very promising one it is. Assembling energetic young players mostly from the Royal Academy, Galkin’s pieces include the award winning ‘Evolvement’ and although there are echoes here of the writing of Maria Schneider, Dave Holland, and Kenny Wheeler say, Galkin establishes his own sound early on that can draw on funky bass fusion as much as it can the melancholy strains of his musical upbringing in which he absorbed the long tradition of Russian classical music. Some richly textured, highly developed melodic writing throughout suggests Galkin is defi nitely going somewhere.