We say: Big band jazz with a Turkish twist.

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol is a jazz composer and a current Fellow of Harvard who specializes in Ethnomusicology and the music of the Ottoman Empire. Originally from Bursa, Turkey and the son of Cypriot Turks, what you might expect to hear given Sanlikol's cultural background is a very obvious Turkish influence. Certainly, the influence is there, but it is far more discreet than you might imagine.

Sanlikol's big band work clearly owes as much to Ellington as he does to traditional Turkish music and on whatsnext? the Turkish influence is subtle enough to sound completely natural. While tunes like "The Blue Soul of Turkoromero" feature ney, a Turkish reed instrument, and "Kozan March" is a reworking of a Cypriot melody, other tunes like the Ellington-inspired title track bear few clues to the composer's origins. Perhaps the most intriguing of the tracks here are those, like "Palindrome," that are truly hybrid in nature and have a foot firmly in both camps — American big band tradition and Turkish folk music.