Bridging the Genre Gap

Build a Bridge. Audra McDonald. (Nonesuch 79862-2)

Technically, Audra McDonald's Build a Bridge isn't a classical album, but the four-time Tony Award-winning diva of Broadway, Hollywood, and the concert stage has a voice that many would-be opera singers would die for. A champion of contemporary art-song composers, here she brings her lustrous soprano and effortless musicianship to songs by contemporary singer-songwriters, including Elvis Costello, Nellie McKay, John Mayer, Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, Neil Young, Rufus Wainwright, and her longtime collaborator, musical-theater composer Adam Guettel.

At 36, McDonald, who earned a bachelor's degree in voice from Juilliard in 1993, is a rare singer whose skills are as applicable to opera as popular song—something that her current schedule makes obvious. In April she will return to Broadway in the Roundabout Theater Company revival of 110 in the Shade. This follows her headlining a concert on February 27 at Juilliard honoring five jazz legends, including James Moody, Billy Taylor, Clark Terry, Frank Wess, and Joe Wilder.

Throughout this album McDonald puts her vocal and stylistic range to the test, starting with "God Give Me Strength," a powerful ballad written and originally recorded by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello in 1996. The song's appeal was never quite realized in Costello's vocally thin version, but McDonald gives its long, arching phrases a haunting magic. She also nicely shapes Guettel's "Build a Bridge" and "Dividing Day," songs whose unconventional, never-quite-there phrases might seem aimless in lesser performers' hands. Other highlights include Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," a dark ballad about isolation and depression; John Mayer's self-deprecating "My Stupid Mouth"; Rufus Wainwright's tango-flavored "Damned Ladies"; and "Bein' Green," Joseph Raposo's tune originally sung, of course, by Kermit the Frog.

Animated Amadeus

Mozart Jazz. Aaron Diehl Trio. (Leafage Jazz 300-90)

Many jazz pianists, including Jacques Loussier and Keith Jarrett, have shown an affinity for the intricate themes of Bach, but giving Mozart the jazz treatment is a slightly more unusual undertaking. Aaron Diehl, a senior in Juilliard's Jazz Studies program, pulls it off with considerable flair in Mozart Jazz, a CD recently released in Japan—which explains the unfortunate lack of English text in the liner notes! The disc is not yet readily available in the United States, but you will find it in the Juilliard Bookstore or, if you can navigate your way around a Web page in Japanese, you can order it on the HMV Japan site for only 2,100 yen.

Diehl grew up in Columbus, Ohio, playing classical music, but recently he's been a guest artist with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, a pianist with the Juilliard Jazz Quintet and a winner of the 2004 Martin E. Segal Award at Lincoln Center. Together with his trio of bassist David Wong and drummer Quincy Davis he lifts the ever-memorable tunes out of Mozart's works and goes to town with a subtle wit and constant spirit of invention.

Often Diehl—who did all the arrangements—begins a song with the original Mozart theme, adorned with a touch of swing embellishment, before breaking off into deep bluesy excursions replete with swirling, cascading piano lines, splashes of percussion, and detailed bass work. Highlights include a swinging version of the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major (K. 467), a fleet-fingered take on the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro, a lustrous version of the Clarinet Concerto in A Major, and a rhapsodic Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in which Diehl makes the old chestnut sound fresh.

Diehl's Mozart may not be as wild and audacious as fellow pianist Uri Caine's deconstruction of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations. But it's refreshingly un-self-indulgent and a serious meeting of artists across centuries.

Mention this column at the Juilliard Bookstore to receive a 5-percent discount on this month's featured recordings. (In-store purchases only.)

Brian Wise is a producer at WNYC radio and writes about music for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Opera News, and other publications.