Lee Pui Ming

Pui Ming's latest release on Innova comes after a long hiatus away from recording, with her last CD arriving in 2002. What we hear here is vintage Pui Ming: rocking back and forth between romance and intensity, coupling a classical precision on the keyboard with a seemingly effortless flow of improvisational ideas. The works themselves, while predominantly improvised, display clarity and precision that employ the best of the twin avatars of major piano work: classical and jazz. While "Coils" explores the range of "jazz," in the vein of the great Don Pullen, "Dive" starts from the romanticism of Debussy and then extrapolates it into a sea of lush, rolling sound. The title track is a concerto for improvised piano and orchestra composed in 2009, ranging from that most jazz of Debussy to some moments redolent of Mahler. This is an impressive series of works from one of the best.