Yeahwon Shin, Aaron Parks, Rob Curto

Lua ya is the ECM debut of the South Korean singer Yeahwon Shin, a quiet album of Korean children's songs, lullabies and spontaneous pieces. She made it with the pianist Aaron Parks and the accordionist Rob Curto. Most of the songs are ones Shin learned from her mother while they planted the family garden. The title welcomes her daughter Lua, and the album is dedicated to mothers and children everywhere.

The record began almost by chance. Shin came as a visitor to Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the producer Sun Chung was recording a solo album with Parks. The resonance of the room made her want to try a duet. When she started a melody from her childhood, Parks, hearing it for the first time, followed it with a cradle of chords. Five months later, in May 2012, they returned with Curto, who had played on Shin's Latin Grammy-nominated first album for ArtistShare. Both Parks and Curto make their first ECM appearance here. The music was mixed at Rainbow Studio in Oslo by Chung, Manfred Eicher and Jan Erik Kongshaug.

Little was arranged in advance. Shin sang some of the songs to her partners before the session, and on Chung's suggestion the three played a thirty-minute concert in the hall without discussion. Some tunes, such as Island Child and Remembrance, are very well known in Korea. Shin sings in Korean and, when improvising, in a language of her own, shaped by Portuguese as well as Korean sounds after years of singing Brazilian music. Beads of Rain and The Orchard Road each appear twice, the second time as a variation, and four short pieces are credited to Shin and Parks together.

In London Jazz News in 2014, Adrian Pallant wrote that "the opening Lullaby, with homely accordion, gently rocking piano and hushed, motherly tones is an exquisite miniature". In Jazz Journal, Sally Evans-Darby noted that "Shin's voice is often little more than breath, soft and translucent". She added that Parks' arrangements move from complicated filigree to the plainness of a nursery rhyme.

CD, ECM 2337, released in August 2013. Thirteen tracks, about forty minutes of music.