The test of a good crossover record is surely a simple one: does its fusion of genres amplify both of the original musical worlds? Does it say not only something new, but something worth saying? The booklet note for ‘Under the Shadow’ – a collaboration between countertenor Carlos Mena and arranger Jacques Beaud – promises ‘a multidimensional exploration that goes way beyond a mere mixture based on the binary relationship between jazz and classical’, but unfortunately the violent musical collisions staged here offer no such thing.

It’s hard to imagine the listener for this album, which takes classical sources including Purcell, Bach, Fauré and Schumann, strips them for harmonic and melodic parts, and then reassembles them into awkward more-or-less jazz numbers. The dialogue between Baroque music and jazz in particular is a long-established and interesting one, so to join at this late stage with a Dido’s Lament sung to the impassive accompaniment of a Hammond organ, fleshed out by blandly realised piano continuo and predictable saxophone obbligato, is simply not enough, however nicely sung. The best that can be said of moody duet ‘Never come back again’ (a treatment of Legrenzi’s ‘Lumi, potete piangere’) is that its original survives almost intact. The various Bach arrangements lack the wit or joy Jacques Loussier discovered in them nearly 60 years ago.

The other repertoire fares little better. The ‘Libera me’ from Fauré’s Requiem trades cassock for cocktail dress, masquerading as the smooth jazz number ‘A Prayer’, which treats Fauré’s melody to the most vulgar of musical makeovers, while Schumann’s ‘Ich will meine Seele tauchen’ becomes a pop song (and a poor one at that) in ‘White as lilies’. There are some excellent, genuinely imaginative crossover discs out there, but this just isn’t one of them.