The Ring

The involving music of Tokyo-born pianist Keiko Matsui occupies a satin-lined cloud that floats among smooth jazz, traditional jazz, crossover classical, and New Age territory, sometimes radiating a winsome beneficence, sometimes thundering with complex, ominous beauty. With each successive track, the music acquires interesting new shapes, and it's possible that no two listeners will arrive at the same interpretation of the imagery it evokes.

Matsui's works--for piano, small ensemble, and, on occasion, flamenco guitar and small orchestra--are lovely and gentle in spirit. She uses an inviting mélange of styles to articulate her wish for a soothed human condition (the title refers to a symbol for power and its inherent misapplications). These range from an animated jazz piano workout ("Prism") to the cascading, flamenco-tinged "White Owl." By blending improvisation and graceful melody with unexpectedly bold flourishes and surprising textural turns, Matsui effectively strings together 10 tracks that are unpredictable yet attractively cohesive, arranged in storytelling fashion. The result is a 14th career album that yields one of Matsui's most intriguing efforts. --Terry Wood