Jazzed up Bach and Bached up Jazz

Here's something rather splendid - proof that the greatest music defies genres and laughs in the face of pigeonholes.

And speaking of cross-genre brilliance, I think I previously posted a link to late, incomparable Nina Simone on YouTube, performing Love Me or Leave Me. That was a performance of such sparkling brilliance, it deserves another hearing. In particular, listen for the way the piano playing morphs from jazz into a baroque Bach-like display of musical fireworks. Breathtaking. A potted biography calls her:

A protest singer; a jazz singer; a pianist; an arranger and a composer, Nina Simone is a great artist who defies easy classification. She is all of these: a jazz-rock-pop-folk-black musician.

All of these as well as a civil rights activist and classical musician, trained at New York's Julliard School of Music. A huge talent and an inspiration.