Talinka: Rainbow Over Kolonaki

These four UK-based artists produce an all-inclusive world view, interlaced with time-honored standards, jazz, ethnocentric frontiers and conventional wisdom amid a music without borders mindset, enhanced by Tali Azmon's full-bodied sultry vocals and emotive output characterized by Billie Holliday and other great jazz divas. In addition to her blustery choruses, she also augments the set by playing the ukulele while often intimating that she lives and breathes the stories of each song.

This internationally recognized band garners support from UK stalwarts, pianist Ross Stanley and percussionist Billy Pod. Essentially, the musicians carve out a largely elegant soundstage without coming across as schmaltzy, where Gilad Atzmon's woodwind performances occasionally mirror the olden days of jazz with inferences of an after-hours nightclub , cloaked with tobacco smoke and surrounded by half-empty booze bottles.

The band spins Frank Sinatra's "I'm a Fool to Want You" into a modern-era torch song with fragile accompaniment and reformation of the primary theme by Stanley and Jenny Bliss Bennett's subtly streaming viola parts. But "Time Runs Out" is a whimsical piece, containing great depth as bassist Yaron Stavi steers the flow via his supple but poignant lines, joined by Gilad Atzmon's harmonious according shadings as the ensemble conveys a scenic view.

The British folk song "Scarborough Fair" was a mega-hit for Simon & Garfunkel and is given sacred treatment atop Gilad Atzmon's contrasting accordion developments and Tali Atzom and Jenny Bliss' harmonizing vocals. Whereas the classic American standard "I'll Be Seeing You" gets an exotic accent with old school mainstream jazz fundamentals to finalize this rather charming endeavor, underscored by the ensemble's distinctive scope of execution and integration of nostalgia into a modern viewpoint.

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