Here is a musician of consummate sensitivity who has opted for percussion to express herself. No thundering fireworks, a feast of timbre and nuance. She studied marimba with the great Keiko Abe and moved to Sweden to work with Anders Loguin and Kroumata. This debut CD is of a well selected programme including Hideki Kozakura's Johali composed for Mika Takehara. The engineering of the recording adds to the pleasure, the subtlest timbres down do ppp being captured perfectly.

Mika Takehara's own notes are descriptive and biographical; she made a brave decision to go alone to Sweden, unable to converse in Swedish or English, and missing Japanese food. Her consequent total immersion in music speaks for itself in this outcome - a great percusssionist to join the pantheon with names familiar in UK like Evelyn Glennie, Pedro Carneiro and Colin Currie; I hope we will hear her in London soon - in next year's Rhythmsticks at South Bank Centre?