Marco Cappelli, the Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer, makes music that is beyond category while remaining connected to Southern Italy. He has founded a new label, 41st Parallel Records, to distribute his genre-bending works.

Cappelli, a musician from Naples, lives in a walk-up apartment, in a building with an Italian American landlord, in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, a historically Italian American neighborhood. Gazing out a window facing the backyard, you see his neighbors’ well-tended grape arbors and gardens.