Accompanying their hugely impressive international performances at both the Finnish Tampere and London Jazz Festivals at the end of last year, the French pianist Eve Risser's White Desert Orchestra releases a CD of equally inspiring proportions. Risser is a former member of the colourfully innovative Orchestre National de Jazz and this 10-piece orchestra is one of the best you'll likely to hear of its kind, mixing contemporary classical (there are hints of Turnage and Stravinsky, only hints though), avant-rock and free jazz among others. Risser's mesmerising themes deliver conceptually (inspired by South-West America's canyons and rock formations), and are eerily rich in sonic detail with hypnotically colourful orchestration. Risser gets the most out of her highly individualistic orchestra members, all from Paris aside from the Norwegian trumpeter Eivind Lønning. Compositions evolve organically and the combination of avant-garde instrumental effects that includes Risser's prepared piano and Julien Desprez whacking his guitar with a brush, subtly enhance the ghostly yet warm atmospheric qualities of her compositions, sounding neither noisily superfluous nor over-cerebral. Stimulating on many levels, Eve Risser's White Desert Orchestra is undoubtedly setting new standards in European contemporary ensemble music.