Boston Globe, June 25, 2012 The Brazilian singer Céu calls “Caravana Sereia Bloom” — her third CD, which came out earlier this year — a road album. It is meant to capture, she says, “many aspects of the road,” a topic she’s had ample time to reflect on as a touring artist. “Since my first […]
Tag: brazil
Singer Curumin is a shining star in Saõ Paulo
Boston Globe, June 25, 2012 “São Paulo is a huge city, but we don’t have a lot of music tradition,” says singer Curumin, speaking of Brazil’s commercial metropolis, with its area population of 20 million. “Samba belongs to Rio, maracatu belongs to Recife — in Brazilian musical history, we don’t have a lot of people […]
From many sounds, one beat
Boston Globe, April 11, 2011 NEW YORK – The narrow steps to the basement of a modest brick house in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn lead into a little enclave of Salvador da Bahia’s Afro-Brazilian drum culture. Instruments of all kinds crowd the studio: timbales, congas, and homemade drums using trash barrel tops and […]
Sounds of Brazil—by way of Appalachia
Boston Globe, September 5, 2010 The revelation, says guitarist Clay Ross, boiled down to a single song. It was a baiao – a style of folk music from northeastern Brazil – by one of the masters of the genre that drove home to this South Carolina country boy-turned-New York City jazzman a connection that he […]
Family affair with a bossa nova beat: Milton Nascimento
Boston Globe, October 9, 2008 On “Novas Bossas,” the latest project from singer and composer Milton Nascimento, two legends of Brazilian – and by extension, global – popular music find their long-delayed confluence. The first is the late Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, the seminal songwriter of the bossa nova movement, whose compositions, artfully rearranged, make […]
One nation under a beat
Boston Globe, July 25, 2008 NEW YORK – It’s about three songs into a live performance by Nation Beat, the exuberant and inquisitive Brooklyn-based band that has pioneered a synthesis of music from northeastern Brazil and the American South, that you realize for good that this is no run-of-the-mill, hippiefied world-beat fusion project. That’s when, […]
Finding his way back home again: Sergio Mendes
Boston Globe, June 20, 2008 One of the privileges of stardom is the ability to concoct and pull off projects that color outside the lines. In the past few years Sergio Mendes, the superstar Brazilian keyboardist and bandleader and longtime ambassador of bossa nova, has drawn freely on this license. In 2006, for his first […]
At 65, he increases range: Caetano Veloso
Boston Globe, November 2, 2007 Caetano Veloso has never been one to rest on his laurels. At 65, the great Brazilian singer, who plays the Orpheum Theatre tonight, still shows the restlessness that first earned him fame in the late 1960s, when, together with fellow Bahian Gilberto Gil, he helped forge the ebullient, edgy, multi-arts […]
The Brazilian sound is music to pianist’s ears
Boston Globe, December 22, 2006 Pianist Kenny Barron is a jazz listener’s dream: He records and tours constantly, yet no two dates are ever the same. His range of projects makes him not just one of the finest players of the day, but also a jazz activist with insatiable curiosity. Among memorable recent ventures are […]
Tania Maria returns to her roots
Boston Globe, August 17, 2006 Tania Maria has the soul of a rebel but peace in her heart. At 58, and with more than 20 albums to her name, the pianist and singer has accumulated the wisdom and discography of a senior musician. Brazilian by birth, expatriate by choice, she’s conducted a long-running and sophisticated […]
Rodrigues belts out a cultural slice of Brazil
Boston Globe, November 12, 2005 The Afro-Brazilian diva Virginia Rodrigues is known for investing the music of Salvador de Bahia, her native city, with a poise and poignancy that can evoke gospel or opera. She opened her weekend engagement at Regattabar last night with a charismatic performance that showcased these traits, with the layering and […]
Siddhartha Mitter 