Often heard in a piano-bass-drums trio setting, Edward Simon is a noted creative jazz and post-bop pianist whose performing and recording career has been based in the United States since the late '80s, but the music of Venezuela -- the country of his birth and preteen years -- has always remained close to his heart. While Latin jazz flavors surface in Simon albums such as 1998's La Bikina, nowhere is his home country's musical influence stronger than in the straightforwardly named Ensemble Venezuela, which the pianist formed in 2003. Melding jazz and Venezuelan folk musics and performing Simon's original material as well as his arrangements of compositions penned by notable Venezuelan artists, Ensemble Venezuela features, in addition to the leader on piano, drummer Adam Cruz and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner (both longstanding Simon collaborators); Venezuelan-born, New York-based brothers flutist Marco Granados and maracas player Leonardo Granados (also a noted bolero and tango singer); and two noted musicians on the current Venezuelan scene, bassist Roberto Koch and cuatro player Jorge Glem. Adding to the group's diverse timbral and textural palette are several guest musicians: bass clarinetist John Ellis, harpist Edmar Castañeda (born in Bogotá, Colombia), and percussionist Luis Quintero. In 2005 Chamber Music America commissioned Simon to write "Venezuelan Suite" for the ensemble, which, after live performances at festivals and venues in both the United States and Venezuela, recorded the four-part composition at Brooklyn, New York's Systems Two studio in the fall of 2012. The album Venezuelan Suite -- including both the suite and a Simon arrangement of Heraclio Fernández's "El Diablo Suelto" -- was released by the Sunnyside label in January 2014. ~ Dave Lynch, Rovi