Christopher Trapani is one of America’s musical prospects. Still in his thirties (just about), Trapani has studied at IRCAM, the Royal College of Music, Columbia and Harvard and in Turkey. Along the way he has won the prestigious Gaudeamus Prize and has just won a Guggenheim Fellowship. With his apprenticeship finished, this debut shows what he’s about.

An important strand in Trapani’s music is his New Orleans heritage. It shines through on the titular song-cycle Waterlines (2012), for mezzo, guitar, small ensemble, and electronics, given a lively performance by Talea and Lucy Dhegrae. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Trapani wrote Waterlines using material from vintage New Orleans country and blues recordings. In the opening song ‘Can’t feel at home’, the mezzo’s mixolydian ballad is gradually joined by a finely wrought texture of instrumental strums and whisps and microtones. If at times (as at the opening of ‘Poor boy blues’) I couldn’t help wondering whether an African American blues singer might give more heft, the musical detail keeps you coming back; ‘Poor boy blues’, for example, teasingly mixes Romantic woodwind filigree, blues vocals and spectralist harmonic sculpting.

Precursors for such use of American folk music come readily to hand, from Copland to Partch. Trapani’s style, though, is lively, up to date and distinctive. I was lucky enough to hear the Jack Quartet premiere the string quartet Visions and Revisions at Wigmore Hall in 2013. Listening to Visions and Revisions on this record, it is every bit as enigmatic and introspective. Ever-so-brief lyrical shards of Bob Dylan’s ‘Visions of Johanna’ are analysed and resynthesised in spectralist manner; glassy harmonics, bow bounces and string sweeps, along with close counterpoint, articulate a mercurial tapestry.

A general theme of itinerancy culminates in the album’s standout work. Cognitive Consonance (2010) explores links between Turkish classical, European classical and rock. The opening section, ‘Disorientation’, centres on the qanûn, a plucked Turkish dulcimer tuned microtonally. We’re treated to a wonderfully rich acoustic palette through virtuoso playing and mobile harmonic polarities. The second movement, ‘Westering’, centred on hexaphonic electric guitar, is of the more familiar post-spectralist style heavily mined at IRCAM. Where, as often, the music shoots free of such influences it is at its strongest. Trapani’s debut whets the appetite for what will come next.