In the words of his friend the violist and conductor Yuri Bashmet, the composer-pianist Igor Raykhelson – born in Leningrad in 1961 and now resident in New York – ‘possesses a superb mastery of both classical and jazz idioms’. The highly individual fusion of styles that results, Bashmet continues, ‘elevates his music over that of many other composers creating in the genre often referred to as “crossover”’. The Jazz Suite on this CD exhibits Raykhelson’s popular style at its most infectiously catchy; the other three works here – in the Russian tradition of writing for strings initiated by Tchaikovsky – present the more classical side of his muse.