Beautifully recorded at Casa del Jazz in Rome and La Seine Studios in Paris – take a bow recording engineer KhoT Hung – Core (Coraçao) gets to the very heart of vocalist, composer and arranger Maria Pia De Vito's singular artistry. The initial spark for this spellbinding album came seven years ago, when De Vito performed in concert with the Brazilian guitarist and composer Guinga for the first time. De Vito recalls in the CD booklet how this encounter opened up “a musical and poetic gold mine”, when she found herself translating the lyrics of Guinga's music into her beloved Neapolitan. Core represents the sumptuous fruits of De Vito's linguistic adventures with the music of Guinga, Jobim, Gismonti and, notably, Chico Buarque. Buarque himself guests on a brace of tracks, the luminous duet ‘O Piccerillo (O Meu Guri)’ and the brilliantly evoked Todo Sentimento’, the album's sole Portuguese lyric which Buarque records as a duet for the first time here. On an album of standouts, the plaintive melodicism of the Guinga/Pinheiro-penned ‘Notturna (Noturna)’ lingers long in the memory, as does the incredible vocal heft of ‘O Ritorno D'o Jammone (A Volta do Malandro)’ and the startling emotional power of the album's closing song, ‘Curre Maria (Olha Maria)’, presented here as a stripped back voice/clarinet duet. Anyone who's had the pleasure of seeing De Vito perform with pianist Huw Warren will be aware of their remarkable musical rapport. Factor in the presence of clarinet virtuoso Gabriele Mirabassi, the exceptional guitarist and arranger Roberto Taufic, the versatile percussionist Roberto Rossi and the captivating voices of Ensemble Vocale Burnogualà, and you have something approaching a dream line-up for this material.