Album: Pink Martini, Splendor in the Grass (Naive)

Describing themselves as "musical ambassadors", this American group spread their net wide, and here they've absorbed a huge variety of styles, spanning jazz, classical, and musics of many different nationalities.

They do bal-musette and rough ranchero, while Schubert morphs into a Cuban groove, and then into a 1950s-style big-band number. What most impresses is their technical mastery, both vocal and instrumental, as they transform from track to track, each time exuding the same infectious joie de vivre.