Maya Youssef is a multi-award winning musician and composer from Syria. She is hailed as 'queen of the qanun,' the 78-stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither. Maya's intense and thoughtful music is rooted in the Arabic classical tradition but forges pathways into Western classical and contemporary styles. It explores the emotional and healing qualities of music. The 'Finding Home' is a journey through memories and the essence of home both within and without in the search of that place of peace, comfort, and healing which manifests in everyone in a unique way.

The colours of The Magical Forest glow in this remarkable recording which brings together Sinikka Langeland’s Norwegian-Finnish-Swedish Starflowers quintet with the singers of the Trio Mediӕval. It’s an inspired concept: the Trio Mediӕval, with their affinity for folk music and their unique vocal blend, adapt themselves ideally to Sinikka’s sound-world, which is once archaic, timeless and contemporary. The quintet members, all bandleaders in their own right, are amongst the most characterful players in Scandinavia today, and Sinikka sets them free to improvise around her cycle of songs, built upon myths and legends of the world tree.

Immortal Memory is a collaboration between vocalist Lisa Gerrard and Irish composer Patrick Cassidy. Billed as a cycle of life and death and rebirth, Immortal Memory is better described as an orphaned film score. Cassidy's warm arrangements allow the former Dead Can Dance singer to step out of the dark medieval world that she's called home for nearly 20 years – though there is much of that world within these castle walls – and focus on the simplicity of love, faith, and loss with a grace that's bereft of the icy perfection of her previous work. Gerrard, whose voice has aged like the finest oak, displays an almost supernatural mastery of the material. Her effortless contralto wraps itself around the ten Gaelic, Latin, and Aramaic spirituals like an evening prayer, making each stunning entrance the equivalent of audio comfort food.

With "Le souffle des cordes" Renaud Garcia-Fons aims to go further in the meeting of classical and traditionnal instruments. It's a "crossover" project mixing composition and improvisation.

A few years ago, a very interesting relationship began to develop. A bridge was built out of Jaubi's releases on Astigmatic Records and the increasingly frequent collaborations between musicians from Europe and Asia - out of Latarnik's trip to Pakistan resulting in the widely acclaimed album Nafs at Peace and Zohaib, Dhani and Ali's revisit to Poland, which has been recorded as the EABS meets Jaubi In Search of a Better Tomorrow longplay.

Perry and Gerrard continued to experiment and improve with The Serpent's Egg, as much a leap forward as Spleen and Ideal was some years previously. As with that album, The Serpent's Egg was heralded by an astounding first track, "The Host of Seraphim." Its use in films some years later was no surprise in the slightest – one can imagine the potential range of epic images the song could call up – but on its own it's so jaw-droppingly good that almost the only reaction is sheer awe. Beginning with a soft organ drone and buried, echoed percussion, Gerrard then takes flight with a seemingly wordless invocation of power and worship – her vocal control and multi-octave range, especially towards the end, has to be heard to be believed. Nothing else achieves such heights, but everything gets pretty darn close, a deserved testament to the band's conceptual reach and abilities.

Comparing early Al di Meola dates like Land of the Midnight Sun and Casino to his albums of the 1990s, it's clear how much his playing has softened. The exceptional World Sinfonia, an entirely acoustic CD, makes it clear that what hasn't changed is his unpredictable, spontaneous nature. Di Meola's right-hand man throughout this highly introspective date is the soulful bandonean player Dino Saluzzi, with whom he enjoys an undeniably strong rapport. A long-time lover of world music, di Meola incorporates South American, Spanish, and Middle Eastern elements, and makes Argentine tango a very high priority.

Playing hand percussion and drum kit with a variety of different stars and lesser knowns, Acuna spans the breadth and depth of Latin-based rhythms from his native Peru through Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and other South American locales. Notables Giovanni Hidalgo, Luis Conte, Anthony Carrillo, and Paoli Mejias join a varying sized cadre of singers and fellow percussion helpmates to stroll through this multi-cultural mosaic of percussive splendor. Of the smaller ensemble tracks, "Bemlerias" is a 6/8 song with electric bass and keyboards on the more contemporary side, while "L.A. Rap" sports Spanish trash talk, and the ten-minute "Descarga at Dawn" is the ultimate cha based workout for quintet with Acuna on the kit.

Sometimes a musical message is so urgent that questions of recording quality are almost beside the point. Informally recorded in 1969 in a noisy club – Copenhagen’s famous Jazzhus Montmartre – the flavour of this album is ‘documentary’ rather than luxuriantly hi-fidelity, yet the essence of Abdullah Ibrahim’s communication comes through loud and clear. The listener is drawn into the robust rhythms of his solo piano style, as he re-examines the history of jazz from a South African perspective, with echoes of songs of the townships, and vamps that hint of Monk and Duke and much more. African Piano was a highly influential album, and it has lost none of its power.As part of the Re:solutions series this historical title has been mastered from original analog sources and reissued in January 2014.

Erik Truffaz received an early introduction into the world of a professional musician, thanks to his saxophone-playing dad. When he was ten years old, the French trumpeter began performing in his father's dance band. As he grew older, Truffaz performed with other bands in the region until he was 16 and heard Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The great jazz trumpeter's music inspired him to learn more, and he set off for Switzerland's Geneva Conservatoire, where he became a student. Truffaz's repertoire expanded to works by Mozart and Verdi, and he performed as part of L'Orchestre de Suisse Romande. He also played in cover bands before establishing a group called Orange. The band concentrated on Truffaz's compositions…

Oud virtuoso and composer Anouar Brahem returns to ECM with an inspired trio. In the company of pianist François Couturier and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, he emerges more as guiding wind than guiding light, forging a quietly original program that feels at once unprecedented and timeless. Brahem’s writing is especially intuitive on this outing, teetering from stream-of-consciousness currents to insightful themes in the steady arc of a summer fan.

Philip Glass' soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Dalai Lama epic Kundun captures the grace, beauty, joy and melancholy within the film. Glass uses familiar minimalist structures, but works with traditional Tibetan instrumentation and monks, giving the music an alluringly otherworldly feel. It's an entirely original, evocative score, and one of Glass' high-water marks in the field.

Steve Tibbetts’s first ECM recording since 2001’s “Man About A Horse” is keenly awaited by his dedicated following. “Natural Causes” features the Zen-guitarist of Minnesota and his trusty sidekick Marc Anderson in an all-acoustic programme, a first in the Tibbetts discography.