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Can jazz and cabaret make beautiful music together?

In our musically fragmented world, everything from radio formats to marketing campaigns keeps listeners confined to one genre or another. Or tries to.

But some activists are working to break down barriers, including the wall that separates jazz and cabaret.

On the surface, one might think audiences and musicians would move freely between the two, if only because they share so much repertoire – specifically, the vast body of work routinely called the Great American Songbook (meaning compositions by George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and others).

Yet, for the most part, you won’t see a lot of the same faces in the audience at a top jazz room, such as the Jazz Showcase, and a key cabaret, such as Davenport’s.

Which explains why Chicago Cabaret Professionals – a non-profit advocacy group – will present “Jazz at the Cabaret” at 7:30 p.m. July 22 at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, as part of its CCP Musical Mondays series.

“We’re trying to stretch the cabaret format into the jazz world,” says Chicago singer Anne Burnell, who’s directing the show.

“There’ll be some show tunes, some songs that are normally done in the cabaret arena, but in jazz arrangements and with more improvisation.”

Adds pianist Mark Burnell, her husband and musical director for the show, “We’ve tried to cast people who have a real feel for the jazz element, and we’ve got a great, smoking rhythm section – so we’re trying to swing.”

Indeed, the cast looks promising, with such estimable Chicago jazz musicians as singer Freida Lee and singer-songwriter-instrumentalist Jeannie Tanner. Then, too, singer-pianist Johnny Rodgers, who will perform solo and with singer Ellen Winter Reynolds, practically epitomizes the immutable links between jazz and cabaret, his work long having provided a welcoming forum for both.

Why are the Burnells intent in intertwining jazz and cabaret?

“We felt that the two worlds were not collaborating enough,” says Anne Burnell. “I believe in collaboration. Why not collaborate with classical artists? Why not with jazz artists?

“My friends don’t listen to just one kind of music. They’ll have on their playlists jazz, blues, folk. We can’t pigeonhole people.”

Or, as Mark Burnell puts it, “The genre names go away over time. There used to be ‘smooth jazz.’ Nobody even mentions it today. I don’t think the genre name is important. It’s really about: Can you move the audience? Can you make them feel something?”

Pianist Burnell, who has proven himself compelling in both arenas, sees this effort as a way of championing a quintessentially American art form – jazz – long marginalized in American culture.

“We think sometimes jazz gets put in a corner with its name – as if it’s a four-letter word,” says the pianist.

“We want to open up the audience’s mind: Here’s the song; here’s our take.”

Adds Anne Burnell, “Jazz can make you hear something in a new way. We want to make people feel that.”

In addition to the aforementioned names, the cast will include singers Greta Pope, Daryl Nitz and Nate Buescher, plus Burnell’s jazz piano in tandem with bassist Joshua Ramos and drummer Charles “Rick” Heath, top-notch jazz instrumentalists not often heard in a cabaret setting.

Ultimately, Anne Burnell hopes that this meeting of musical languages “will push everybody,” she says. “We’ve got parts of the songs that are left to improvisation. So the show will happen once and will never happen again in this way.”

Which, of course, is the essence of the elusive art of jazz.

“Jazz at the Cabaret” plays at 7:30 p.m. July 22 at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.; $30; 773-871-3000 or www.victorygardens.org or www.chicagocabaret.org.

Stephen Hough

Pianist Stephen Hough, who brings considerable intellectual curiosity to the standard repertoire, will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Grant Park Orchestra. Also on the program: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 2, “A London Symphony,” and James MacMillan’s “Stomp.” Martyn Brabbins will conduct. 6:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue; free; 312-742-7647 or www.gpmf.org.

Bernstein’s ‘Mass’

Last year, the Ravinia Festival scored a major artistic triumph with its production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” a controversial, stylistically wide-ranging work rarely performed at this level of artistic or technical excellence. The production was so well-received that Ravinia is presenting a welcome encore performance, which will be filmed for a national TV broadcast in 2020. If you missed it last time, here’s one final chance to see and hear baritone Paulo Szot, as the Celebrant, and a huge cast reviving a work richly worth re-examining. 8 p.m. Saturday at the Ravinia Festival, Lake Cook and Green Bay Roads, Highland Park; $25-$90 tickets; $15 lawn; 847-266-5100 or www.ravinia.org.

hreich@chicagotribune.com