Rob Hochschild | November 20, 2013

Spanish producer, composer, and performing artist Javier Limón's just-released Promesas de Tierra features music not only inspired by the Middle East; it shines the light on several young artists from the region. Limón, who is artistic director of Berklee's Mediterranean Music Institute, wrote nine songs for the album and invited a group of instrumentalists—many of them Palestinian and Israeli Berklee students and recent graduates—to play on the recording.

According to the disc's liner notes, Limón and the Mediterranean Music Institute, with this release, are opening "a window to a new style of music far from the traditional archetypes of jazz or world music, leading a new trend towards cultural diversity in contemporary roots music." Within a few days of its release last week, the recording reached No. 1 on the iTunes Spain world music album chart.