Soprano Leah Crocetto joins trio Momenti, who releases their first album Feb. 10

ADRIAN — A quirk of fate brought Lenawee County-born opera singer Leah Crocetto together with pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg and bass-baritone Christian Pursell in Cincinnati. A concert in San Francisco stemming from that initial meeting — and a bottle of Flower Chardonnay — sealed the deal for their new collaboration: the trio they call Momenti.

Momenti releases its first album this week, a self-titled EP from Crossover Records. The album is available now to pre-save on Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer and can be downloaded and streamed beginning Friday, Feb. 10, on additional platforms including iHeart Radio, NetEase, Qobuz, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube.

Pre-saving can be done at hypeddit.com/momenti.

“So many things had to align” for Momenti to come together in the first place, Greenberg said. He was producing a gala in Cincinnati that, because of the pandemic, was being held virtually, and when illness sidelined the lead performer, he knew where to turn: to Crocetto, only a few hours away in Michigan at the time. He knew both her and Pursell, who was also involved with the show, but she and Pursell had never met.

As it turned out, the isolation caused by the pandemic gave the resulting performance a special feel. If the collaboration had occurred under other circumstances, “maybe we’d have connected in the same way, but at that that time we were craving human contact, singing together,” Greenberg said.

Crocetto agreed, saying that when she got to the venue where the show was being produced, “I had the first hug I’d had in months and it was from Christian, and I’d never met him before.”

With no rehearsal, “we just made music together,” she said. And afterward, the three performers went out to dinner together, stayed until the restaurant closed down, and formed a bond in the process.

Realizing the chemistry they had led to conversation about other projects. And that, in turn, led to a live concert last April in San Francisco that Greenberg described as “a powerful, moving experience,” followed, after that performance, by the aforementioned bottle of Flower Chardonnay — and the birth of Momenti.

The group’s (and the EP’s) name, which means “moments” in Italian, stems from the idea that “when people leave a performance, they remember moments from it,” Greenberg said. “It’s that series of moments that we want to capture.”

The trio is launching the album with three concerts, two this week in California and a March 18 performance in Adrian under the auspices of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra.

All three of Momenti’s members are well-established solo artists. Crocetto maintains a busy schedule of operas and other performances as well as being on the voice faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. Pursell performs in opera houses across the country and also works as a video producer. Greenberg does everything from playing jazz to curating an annual concert collaboration between Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and the San Francisco Opera.

The term the trio uses to describe their music is “genre-fluid,” with not only classical influences but those of everything from jazz to pop to folk to musical theater.

Their debut EP’s six tracks reflect that musical diversity.

Two of the tracks are in the operatic vein, while two others are pop-oriented and two are from the musical-theater world “but one has a country vibe,” Pursell said. “We’re not just expanding our abilities in different genres but also to reach as wide of an audience as we can.”

The first track, “Momenti,” is “a collection of opera’s greatest moments that are rarely excerpted, and sung like no one has ever done them,” Crocetto said.

Track No. 2, “Sposa,” is unique in a different way: it’s “Sposa son disprezzata,” used by Vivaldi in his opera “Bajazet,” except that instead of a soprano aria as in the original, Crocetto and Pursell sing it as a duet. And so,  rather than one person singing about another person who isn’t there, this reimagining brings the other person into the room too.

Pop tunes and Broadway music make up the rest of the album: “I Don’t Know What Love Is” from the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper film version of “A Star is Born,” “It All Fades Away” from the Broadway version of “Bridges of Madison County,” Melody Gardot’s “Our Love is Easy,” and “Move On” from Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.”

That last song, with its themes of life and love and always moving forward, has become something of a signature piece.

“Every time I sing it, it’s so emotional,” Pursell said.

The variety of music on the EP typifies what the trio’s music is all about.

“We wanted to have six completely different styles, to express who we are artistically and emotionally, and to be relatable,” Greenberg said. “Our goal was to really challenge ourselves to branch off from the standard classical repertoire.”

For all three of the performers, coming together to form Momenti was a chance to “strike while the iron is hot,” as Pursell put it.

It does mean juggling busy solo careers and the challenges of collaborating across time zones and sometimes even from different countries.

“It’s difficult as an artist to be committed to a group as well as our own solo careers,” Crocetto said. “But I really think Momenti is the future of music."

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Soprano Leah Crocetto joins trio Momenti, releases album Feb. 10