Freitag, 12. August 2011

August 10

The weather continues to improve, to the greatest joy of all - this winter here wasn't that much fun…

What turned out to be fun was the "process" of getting the audio material of the first concert. Since, unfortunately, José no longer can give me the lessons in Portuguese (the semester started at the university), my afternoon was all free. I informed Rodrigo Panassolo, one of the recording engineers, that I could come over to the studio earlier. A short disscussion of plans resulted in him inviting me to join him and the guitarist Paulinho Fagundes for the lunch. We went to a new place not too far from Institute "Delícia Natural", which turned out to be a great place with a wonderful view.

Paulinho Fagundes, a really fine musician - I am listening to his CD right now, and it's very happening - comes from a musical family, his father and two other brothers are all very serious musicians and have a band together. Paulinho is one of the musicians here in Porto Alegre, who are combining the modern jazz language with some subtle elements of regional música gaúcha.
Hearing the accounts about this scene and hearing this CD, I realize that I've missed a bit on the chance to get together with these guys…
Some of the names are: Jorginho do Trompete (heard many legends about him), Michel Dorfman, a very fine pianist, Edu Martins, bass, Marquinhos Fé, drums.

Anyway, our next stop was a music store "Guitar Point", where Rodrigo, who plays guitar too, wanted to check out a new model of Chinese make, using Paulinho's expertise.
After that we were off to Petrópolis, a very nice residential area of the city, where the Transcendental Audio Studio of Leo Bracht is situated.
I spent a few hours there, listening to some recent studio's productions, chatting with Leo, Rodrigo and a couple of younger musicians - pianist and bassist - whom I already knew from my workshops. Leo prepared and copied all the material on my HD, and off I was, back to the Goethe.

It was time to play Concert 3, concluding my musical activities of this residence.

It was a duo concert with the percussion player Mimmo Ferreira, who already participated in the first concert on August 5.
I loved the fact that with him I could combine playing some free or open improvisations, and at the same time go into all kinds of genres and grooves of Brazilian and Argentinian music. It was fun to do an open loose version of milonga or chamamé, drop into a fast samba, or do a "forró" version of my tune Dança Nova, with Mimmo playing triangle. The only complaint I have is that, once again, the attendance was rather disappointing. Really don't understand it…

Afterwards, the director of the Institute Reinhard Sauer invited us for a meal in the old, traditional, "real" Italian place called "Copacabana". Feijão came along, and so did Carol, Mimmo's wife. The food was really fantastic. It went a long way to linder the feelings of not having accomplished nearly as much as intended...

Feijão, while driving to the restaurant, was appalled to hear that I wasn't aware of the great Radamés Gnattali, composer and pianist from Porto Alegre, who helped to form the genre of choro, among many other things.

Here he plays one of his tunes for piano:



And here is a very rare footage (give it a moment, the quality gets better):




Another great composer of Porto Alegre whom I was hardly aware of before is Lupicínio Rodrigues. He worked in the 30's-50's, writing elegant, somewhat sentimental songs about love lost and such. Many of the greatest performers of these times included his songs in their repertoire.

Here is a sample of his style:



And another one, combined with Paulinho da Viola





Keine Kommentare:

Kommentar veröffentlichen