The quiet beauty of Chris Trinidad y Cancion Tagalog illustrates the subtleties between volume, power and intensity.

The musician credits on its inner jacket list instruments with quite curious names, including three types of bata drums (okonkolo, itotele and iya) plus bombo and guagua among the percussion instruments, and with bandurria and octavina among the stringed and strummed ones.

But the strangely quiet, beautiful music these instruments render sounds so much more meaningful than the strange sound of their names.

"On this particular album," Trinidad writes in his notes, "I wanted to musically investigate my identity as a Tagalog-speaking Filipino-Canadian while continuing to explore Afro-Cuban music.

"Could there be a musical bridge between the Philippines and Cuba given their shared Spanish colonial history? This project is my artistic response to those questions."

Trinidad's words claim that Cancion Tagalog brings together two separate things, but his music sounds a singular, seamless vision and voice. This doesn't sound like a cross-cultural experiment. It sounds vibrant and alive, and consistently beautiful.

"Lamig Ng Umaga (Cold Fall Morning)" paints a picture of its title quite bright and clear. Trinidad's bass gently nudges the violin and flute forward through the first few verses, and then everyone steps back except for Trinidad and percussionist