This bold and unusual debut recording features a string quartet and the pellucid voice of Marie-Florence Burki, who also wrote the music. As its title suggests, the album is inspired by Virginia Woolf ’s novel of the same name. “I let the words flow through my body and translate them into songs”, explains Burki, who sings Woolf’s English words despite this being an essentially Franco-Swiss project.

Burki is bracingly unconcerned with genre. The Waves isn’t jazz, but what it actually is… well, that’s not easy to describe. The writing for the quartet is controlled and sophisticated, with influences from folk music as well as modern classical. But the album may well appeal to jazz fans, since her voice has the defiantly poetic, sometimes folky quality of singers like Norma Winstone and (more recently) Becca Wilkins.

Virginia Woolf was an impressionist, with a stream-of-consciousness style that is part poetry, part prose - particularly striking in the novel that has inspired this work. As such, it lends itself well to musical interpretation. The compositions feel pastoral and sensual, dramatic and interior, and both voice and quartet are beautifully recorded.