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CD Review
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Mix Magazine, CD Review >>
This 'Dixie' Music Makes Ya Wanna Samba
By ERIC FEBER
The latest cutting-edge music from Brazil is more than 75 years old, based in New York and features an Israeli jazz musician.
Founded and led by Brazilian expatriate Pedro Ramos, the Choro ENsemble is a 21st-century purveyor of "choro" (SHO-ro), a genre popularly known as "tropical Dixieland." It combines tight chamber music interplay and jazz improvisation over samba rhythms to create a lively, lyrical instrumental music that spread throughout South America's largest country during the 1930s, thanks to the advent of national Brazilian radio.
After following his wife to New York, Ramos, a Sao Paolo native, decided to indulge his musical passion by forming a modern choro group that celebrates the genre while pushing its boundaries. He eventually gathered six-string guitarist Gustavo Dantas, seven-string guitarist Carlos Almeida, pandeiro (Brazilian tambourine/hand drum) player and percussionist Zé Mauricio, and Israeli native Anat Cohen - a standout saxophonist in the New York City jazz scene - on clarinet. Ramos leads the ensemble on the cavaquinho (kava-keen-yo), an indigenous four-string cousin of the guitar.
Although the music dates several score years, "Nosso Tempo" ("Our Time") hardly feels like a museum re-creation. The quintet revels in the genre, breathing life and energy into what some consider a moribund music style. The performances aren't corny, dated, dusty or boring; rather, they're melodic, bright and full of danceable rhythms and infectious melodies.
Cohen usually leads each tune's melodic path. She harmonizes with the other members, adding sweet, and occasionally melancholy clarinet lines that weave and dance on the rhythmic foundations laid by the intricate patterns created by the other four musicians in heated bouts of intricate improvisation. Swirling clarinet lines play call and re-call or shadow the riffs churned out by the three string players. And throughout, Mauricio sounds like a three-man percussion unit as he builds layers of samba rhythms.
Recorded and produced by the group at a New Jersey studio, the session sports several classic choro compositions by such masters as Waldir Azevedo, Pixinquinha and Jacob do Bandolim along with four originals that sound completely at home among the vintage tunes.
"Nossa Tempo" is the perfect vehicle for those who want to samba their way into the future by looking backward. The style may be old but the disc's results are anything but. The Choro Ensemble has the ability to create a magical carnival atmosphere anywhere, anytime.
Rating: 4 1/2 stars
Eric Feber is a staff writer for te Virginian-Pilot. His CD reviews also appear regularly in the Daily Break. Reach out to him at 757.222.5203, or eric.feber@pilotonline.com 10/01/07
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