Juniper

With trio partners Jon Henriksson on bass and Jonas Bäckman on drums, Stockholm-based Estonian pianist Britta Virves offers a vivid musical self-portrait on her debut release, Juniper. It’s a solid fit for Kurt Rosenwinkel’s Heartcore label, home of evocative original music with a distinct harmonic richness. (The guitarist’s brief guest spot on “Interlude” couldn’t be more apropos.) Virves is an adept and fiery improviser, even if the takeaway on Juniper is her writing, with its contrapuntal and rhythmic motion and the kind of chemistry it calls forth in the trio. On “Saaremaa,” she strives to capture the beauty of her native island in the Baltic Sea. With “Rush Hour,” she manages to create a feeling of space even in a dense and fairly uptempo composition. And in the strangely accelerated melodic fragments of the bass/piano unisons in “Starry Night,” she reveals an advanced skill set and keen imagination, the mark of an artist to watch.