Making his ECM debut with Achirana, Greek pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos comes to jazz from a prodigious classical career. He trained at some of the world's finest music schools; as a concert soloist he has a taste for Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Scriabin; he's a respected conductor and a composer of piano music (primarily for one of his admirers, Vladimir Ashkenazy). With bassist Arild Andersen and drummer John Marshall, this is intricate piano trio improvisation in a post-Jarrett vein. Unsurprisingly, Tsabropoulis has an extraordinarily beautiful and expressive touch. Perhaps a little surprisingly, he sounds like a relaxed, fluent, unselfconscious improviser, entirely comfortable with what many classical musicians find a fundamentally different musical philosophy. If you like the knotty but romantic piano trio work of other ECM pianists (notably Keith Jarrett, Steve Kuhn, Bobo Stensen), you're likely to find this a revelation. --Linton Chiswick