Diana Torto, John Taylor, Anders Jormin - Triangoli (2009)

Кenny Wheeler's Nineteen Plus One album with Italy's Colours Orchestra last year woke me up to the emergence of Italian singer Diana Torto – a performer with the accuracy, tonal purity and improvisational flexibility of the UK's Norma Winstone (clearly a major influence). Winstone's sweepingly skilful former piano partner John Taylor, one of the world's great jazz keyboardists, displays a comparable sensitivity to Torto's talents in this trio, as does the bassist Anders Jormin. Quite a lot of this session is unsurprisingly dreamy and delicate, and if you find slow-swaying scat-singing, or lonesome-winds-blowing-through-my-mind lyrics irritating, then approach with caution. But Torto is a singer of immense class and subtle emotional strength, and her brief uptempo forays here are dazzling. The skipping Mi(S) Stango, with its impetuously dancing scat lyric over Jormin's bassline is a theme and improvisation that's worth the album. Torto's purity is hypnotic on Love Song and solemnly hymnal on M; John Taylor's gracefully whirling Field Day reflects his Kenny Wheeler associations; and the girlish Summer Night is the closest thing to a jazzy groove. This is the arrival of a real class act, and Torto couldn't have two classier partners.