Zela Margossi's peripatetic career took her from Lebanon to Armenia to Australia, where she is now establishing her career in jazz. A formidably gifted classical pianist she was drawn to the music of her native Armenia as a child and finally decided to take the plunge and study jazz in order to create the kind of music she felt within. The result is this exemplary album that is simultaneously heartfelt, authentic and wholly absorbing. This is music that can be returned to again and again, each time revealing a little more of itself with its abundance of inner detail. Though she claims she is not a composer, one of the keys to this album's success are the sophisticated ad hoc song forms she has created to best realise her music – this is not ensemble-solos-ensemble, but a wealth of shifting textures, ensembles, melodies and metres. In Stuart Vandegraaff she has a gifted collaborator on clarinet and soprano sax – his clarinet tone is especially arresting, full, round and woody it illuminates Margossian's compositions with neon-like clarity on pieces such as the title-track and ‘Ceasefire’. His command of the soprano, both tonally and technically, is equally impressive. With a superb rhythm section capable of commanding the stage in their own right – ‘Mystic Flute’ – this is the glocalisation of jazz writ large; a combination of the global sound of American jazz combining with the local folkloric music of Armenia and the result is my album of the year.