Maria Pia de Vito, François Couturier, Anja Lechner, Michele Rabbia: Il Pergolese

In the end, it's jazz musicians who will save the world from the genre police. For proof, check out this genre-busting reinterpretation of Italian opera composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's music. Neapolitan singer Maria Pia de Vito is well known for her category blindness, and here she teams up with three musicians with form in blurring the lines between jazz and classical: cellist Anja Lechner, pianist François Couturier, and percussion/ electronica wizard Michele Rabbia. The essential character of Pergolesi's sacred and profane melodies is retained, by turns somber, elegiac and whimsical. But here new layers of meaning are added through improvisation by a quartet of equals in total command of their material and their instruments. propermusic.com