Raised on folk and classical music in his native Transylvania, turned onto jazz during his military service and schooled in Bucharest and Vienna, saxophonist Nicolas Simion bursts on the scene with Luca’s Dream, a 10-tune musical travelogue with a Balkan bent.

Simion is joined, in this pianoless trio, by bassist Ed Schuller, drummer and multi-percussionist Patrice Heral (or, on several tracks, Victor Lewis) in a program of original folk and European classical music-influenced originals and modern “standards” by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman.