BORN in New York in 1955 of African-American and Polish parentage, Marilyn Mazur’s family moved to Denmark when she was six.

As a child she danced and learned piano but when she was 19, inspired by Al Foster, Airto Moreira and the Danish drummer Alex Riel, she took up the she drums and formed her first band, Zirenes, in 1973.

A decade or so later, she was she playing on Miles Davis’s big-band album Aura, a “key moment,” she says, which “opened up the whole world for me, musically.”

Invited to join Davis’s band she returned to New York for the first time and went on to tour and play to huge audiences.

Davis was one of her great inspirations, she recalls. “I found a freedom with him and developed a lot rhythmically and groove-wise. I created home-made electric sounds and a trigger-dance mat for my dancing-drums solo.”

Mazur has always championed the progress of women in jazz and her all-woman, all-Scandinavian album Shamania brings together musicians from the avant-garde jazz scene in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

It is, says Mazur, “a very special group to lead, with our energy and wide spectrum of expression and, as a pan-Scandinavian band, the social aspects are warmer.”

Shamania is a richly beautiful record, full of dramatic and uniquely musical moments in solo and ensemble harmony.

There are gripping solo sequences, like Dane Lotte Anker’s chirruping. birdlike saxophone solo in New Secret, Norwegian trumpeter Hildegunn Oiseth’s blistering chorus in Space Entry Dance or Danish-Japanese pianist Makiko Hirabayashi’s electronically serene keys on Chaas or Heartsblood Moon.

Throughout, Mazur’s gantry bells, drums, balaphone and kalimba reach out to Africa and the planet with a unity of wood, metal and skins as these women embrace the world and its sounds.

“We strive for a sense of global unity, for music is common for us all to share. We don’t believe in issues which separate us. Our sounds are made to create connection, unity and empathy.”

There’s a combination of soothing tranquility and proud declaration throughout this album, of brilliant women musicians claiming their share of jazz history in their very own way — there’s not a sound of the US or other parts of Europe in what they deliver.

It’s a musical soundscape which is entirely new, radiantly fresh and enchantingly beautiful.

Shamania is released on Rare Noise Records.