In the United States, adult contemporary is widely regarded as mainly for English-speaking audiences. But the truth is that adult contemporary thrives in a variety of languages. The romantic Latin pop of superstars like Marco Antonio Sol¡s, Joan Sebast¡an, Jos‚ Jos‚, Luis Miguel, and Juan Gabriel is essentially adult contemporary performed in Spanish; Laura Pausini and Eros Ramazzotti are two examples of Italian singers who have recorded a lot of adult contemporary for the Italian-language market. So bearing all that in mind, it makes perfect sense for Canadian singer Mark Masri to favor a multilingual approach to adult contemporary on La Voce (which is Italian for "The Voice"). On a purely musical level, the Toronto native doesn't do anything wildly experimental on this 58-minute CD; he isn't combining salsa with Celtic music (which Scotland's Salsa Celtica have done) or blending Mexican duranguense with Dominican bachata (which Los Hor¢scopos de Durango have done). Rather, try to envision what might happen if, say, Phil Collins or Celine Dion sang in several different languages on the same album; that is the type of thing that Masri does on La Voce. This ballads-oriented effort doesn't achieve a lot of musical diversity, but it certainly achieves linguistic diversity -- and Masri sings as convincingly on the English-language tracks as he does singing in Italian on "C'Š Sempre Musica," in French on "Je T'Attendrai," and in Spanish on a translation of Sting's "Fragile." Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (a major hit for Roberta Flack in 1969) is performed in both Italian and English, and "Erev Shel Shoshanim" (a male/female duet with singer Amy Sky) is performed in Arabic and Hebrew. But all that linguistic diversity doesn't prevent Masri from maintaining a gently romantic ambience; La Voce is an easy listening album that just happens to be in six different languages. Anyone who expects La Voce to be an ultra-daring world fusion type of affair will be disappointed because -- again -- Masri is more daring linguistically than he is musically. But La Voce could easily go down in history as one of the more memorable adult contemporary/easy listening releases of 2010. ~ Alex Henderson