Renowned multi-instrumentalist Jessica Lurie’s current elastic ideas have evolved from a range of musical settings - from baroque flute to avant-garde jazz with Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums (formerly known as the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet) to The Living Daylights, one of Seattle’s favorite underground musical exports to the so-called “jam band” circuit.

These days, though, she’s focused on the Jessica Lurie Ensemble, blending folkie melodies that expand and contract over sheets of rainy day rhythms with thoughtful observations about the world. Shop of Wild Dreams, Lurie’s fourth ensemble album will be released on January 13.

Her regular New York band is a group of individually stellar players—bassist Todd Sickafoose, drummer Allison Miller, keyboardist Erik Deutsche and guitarist Brandon Seabrook plus special guests Elizabeth Pupo-Walker on percussion and Tina Richarson (a fellow Tipton) on baritone and tenor saxes—who heighten the playful, risk-taking elements of Lurie’s diverse musical influences. Whether it’s Seabrook’s manipulation of tape recordings or co-producer Sickafoose’s affection for stretching out a melody to see where it goes, together, the group creates music that’s as strong-willed as it is ethereally pretty.

Shop of Wild Dreams features ten original tracks inspired by personal journeys that both took her around the world and forced her to look deep within herself. Although the material was originally written in 2007, Lurie says much of the music changed during the recording process, as new ideas for arrangements or improvisations emerged and she opened herself up to the possibilities of the moment. And in her case, that moment meant any combination of singing, playing flute, tenor or alto sax, accordion or baritone ukulele.

Lurie’s esteemed career has featured roles as a lead composer and wind instrumentalist for Seattle jazz-rock outfit the Living Daylights, the all-female sax outfit The Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums (or The Tiptons, as they are commonly known), the NYC Latin ensemble la Buya and in various combinations with players such as Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Booker T. Jones, Julie Wolf, and Italian musicians Zeno de Rossi (drums), Danilo Gallo (bass), Giorgio Pacorig (piano).

But lately, Lurie has also been honing her skills as a singer and lyricist, drawing on a deep love of the folk song tradition, a clever approach to improvisation and an affection for the funkier aspects of eastern grooves as well as modern rock. On Shop of Wild Dreams, her vocal range is flexible and gracefully controlled. She switches between instruments with ease, while crafting thoughtful lyrics about the relationships between cultures, people, even the time and space continuum between wakefulness and dreaming.