On November 21 at 10:00PM the Choro Ensemble will present the
music of Dom Salvador as well as their standard repertoire at Mo Pitkins (34
Avenue A between 2nd and 3rd Streets) in New York City. Cover: $12.00.
The New York based Choro Ensemble next recording will feature twelve original
contemporary choros, waltzes, maxixe, and sambas composed by Dom Salvador along
with original arrangements for the Choro Ensemble’s “regional” format: 7 string
guitars, cavaquinho, clarinet and percussion. Choro Ensemble’s first album,
Choro Ensemble, was released in April 2005 was released on Circular
Moves.Living in New York for the past 30 years, the legendary Brazilian pianist and
composer Don Salvador recorded more than one thousand albums with different
Brazilian artists in 1950’s and 60’s. He is the pianist on the Master
Pixinguinha’s last album that was just re-released in Brazil by Warner Music.
New York’s only group devoted to choro music, Choro Ensemble was named one of
the Top Weekly Jazz Gigs by The Village Voice. The five-member group plays in
the authentic style you would have heard in Rio cafes in the ’20s and ’30s, with
the traditional instrumentation of that period: Pedro Ramos displays his
dazzling skill on the cavaquinho (a small, ukulele-like guitar); guitarist
Carlos Almeida and bass guitarist Gustavo Dantas add richness to the group with
beautifully complex counterpoint; Ze Mauricio lays down a shuffling
Afro-Brazilian percussion base on pandeiro (tambourine); and Anat Cohen
elegantly delivers plaintive Portuguese melodies and dashes off speedy,
virtuosic runs on clarinet.
Choro music has a sound like nothing else (imagine wistful Dixieland) and its
connection to the classical stage has long been celebrated in Brazil. Renowned
Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos called the style “the essence of the
Brazilian Musical Soul,” and he found the same inspiration in choro that
Gershwin did in early American jazz. Like ragtime in the United States, choro
reigned as the most popular music of Rio’s dance halls in the early 20th
Century, and it’s easy to hear why: its delicate, virtuosic classical style and
waltzing melodies are brightened by the vibrant, syncopated rhythms of samba.
Choro Ensemble has performed with masters like Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln
Center Jazz Orchestra, Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops, Paulo Moura, and
Paquito D’Rivera. Collectively, the musicians have played with notable artists
like Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Winter, Slide Hampton, Nancy Wilson, Vernon Ried, Bucky
Pizzarelli, Nana Vasconcelos, Cyro Baptista, and Romero Lubambo.
Author: admin
