Berklee-trained Italian tenorman D'Aiello has been a London fixture since 1999 and is noted for his warm, emotional style. Here he's realised a long held wish to record with strings and voices. Inevitably, the result takes on a hybrid character, the opening vocal on ‘The Angel’ pop-ish in timbre, Montrone's short solo and the leader's impassioned tenor soon restoring the faith, albeit with the cushioning of strings. Where other players will explore, say, standard songs in an instrumental context with underpinning by strings, these are mostly throughcomposed pieces with occasional instrumental interludes, save for ‘Alfie’ here presented in both vocal and instrumental versions. Much as I appreciate the quartet's individual contributions and Renato's lovely sound, the compositions themselves don't really hold the attention and the string writing lacks animation: I'm still far from sure of the efficacy of a long improvised piano solo on, say, ‘The Sea Goddess’, supported by a surging string accompaniment. Fish and fowl come to mind. Better, perhaps to move on to ‘Alfie’ where Renato plays the melody with feeling but largely straight, the string writing relatively subdued. While one applauds the desire and the application involved in this production, its content and outcomes may well fall outside the remit of many Jazzwise readers, me included.