Tania Giannouli confirms with her fourth album that she is a leading musician, able today to share, in their most direct expression, the outbursts of a strong beating heart.

Compelling melodies with rolling momentum … like Manfred Eicher’s dream of a Mediterranean holiday.

Tania Giannouli makes jazz of the kind where improvisation is just the starting point and somewhere out there -- or something deep inside -- is the aim.

This music invites the listener to dream of eternity.

With this solo Giannouli manifested herself as a very unique and forceful voice. It strengthened the ties with the growing audience she has built in recent times. She proved to be a daring female leader from the European periphery that restructured and melded old and new, known and unknown, classical and improvisational elements in vivid and captivating ways. Not a typical jazz cat but an energetic and decisive player with an open and versatile musical mind.

"Transcendence" by the Tania Giannouli Ensemble is a gorgeous, nuanced instrumental album that recently caught my ear. The Greek pianist and composer leads a superb ensemble that explores varied pieces ranging from the minimalist to the mercurial. It's an album beyond genres, meshing the universes of new music, jazz, and rock, as well as several world music influences. It's a superb listen for anyone with open ears.

Giannouli is a unique voice, as a composer, pianist and improviser. She has many more musical stories that are waiting to be told.

Tania Giannouli might not be signed to ECM yet, but she would surely be welcomed inside their sonic universe.

Her music, far from providing pleasant or pleasing escape, generates an intense perception of reality. Its cinematic qualities go hand in hand with a deep commitment to expressive communication.

In a way the virtues of Giannouli’s compositional approach at large, lie in the capacity of turning a stone-hearted reviewer back into his much younger self taken by something indescribable like, say, the nocturnal scents of a summer sea. You just sit down, enjoy the mix of far-flung echoes and stillness, and leave the criticism to someone else.

The result, in many ways, leaves us speechless. Tania Giannouli deserves wide international recognition, a special place in the spotlight.

A Greek pianist and a Kiwi master of taonga puoro (‘singing treasures’) in a series of fearless improvisations that transcend time, space, genres, cultures and horizons.