This is the debut CD from Blue Jelly, a new label based in Cornwall, and also from the Solaris Quartet. It’s an auspicious release, in the sense that it gives us something new without resorting to silliness or gimmickry. Spiritual leader and mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was a man of many talents, and these included composing. A large body of his surviving work as a composer is collaborative. During the 1920s, he worked with Thomas de Hartmann, who transcribed melodies that Gurdjieff had collected earlier in life from Eastern Europe and Asia, and thereby created a large body of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music. This has been recorded by the likes of Keith Jarrett (ECM) and by Cecil Lytle (Celestial Harmonies), whose complete traversal of this oeuvre requires six CDs. There have been arrangements as well. For example, cellist Anja Lechner and pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos have performed and recorded (for ECM New Series) a selection of them. The music is lyrical and grave, and it is touched by the various regions of the world that Gurdjieff and de Hartmann frequented. It is contemplative, even philosophical, yet there is more to it than New Agey navel-gazing.