[JPL] 50 Years Of Bossa Nova, Barbican, London

[Jazz Promo Services]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/50-years-of-bo
ssa-nova-barbican-london-835044.html

Independent.co.uk
50 Years Of Bossa Nova, Barbican, London
Reviewed by Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Fifty years ago, Brazil briefly remade jazz in its own image. Drawing on the
nation's own Afro-European samba style, bossa nova ("new trend") found
fruitful common ground with US cool jazz. "The Girl from Ipanema", in the
global hit version adapted by Stan Getz to emphasise Astrud Gilberto's
voice, created an exotic archetype that has lasted half a century. This
repeat of a celebratory concert on Rio's Ipanema beach this year, uniting
bossa interpreters across generations and styles, brings a heavily Brazilian
audience to the Barbican's more staid environment, which the musicians never
quite overcome. But it proves to be a warm-hearted introduction to a
still-living form of jazz.

Joyce, four decades into her own career, begins with bossa co-founder
Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Aguas de Marco". Her voice flows, then pecks.
Meanwhile, tonight's veteran band give a masterclass in the form. Tutty
Moreno's drums, hitting the rim and brushing the cymbals, softly shuffle on
the off-beat; switch your attention to the double-bass or piano (at times
weirdly indistinguishable), and you hear individual yet softly interlocking
elements that provide a study into swaying Brazilian counterpoint.

Then Dori Caymmi ­ son of pre-bossa Brazilian great Dorival ­ adds his warm
bass voice and, listening to his conversational yet intense phrasing, you
can hear what Frank Sinatra recognised in the music when he recorded with
Jobim in the Sixties. It is spare yet vibrantly pretty, modest but clearly
romantic. Caymmi's recent employment in the US by Dionne Warwick and Diana
Krall shows how easily this can dissipate into middle-of-the-road elevator
music (the place "Girl from Ipanema" has probably been heard most often).

Carlos Lyra, a white-haired, black-sweatered, old-school Copa hipster, has
showbiz touches ­ you can imagine him in some ultra-sophisticated Vegas
nightclub. But his repertoire of songs co-written by the poet Vinicius de
Moraes (a Jobim collaborator who also wrote the film Black Orpheus, a key
text in Brazilian music's entry to the world) come from Rio's heart.

He explains the lyrics, which range from a Red Riding Hood retelling in
which the Big Bad Wolf ends up on a leash, to more traditionally macho Latin
attitudes, which draw wry laughs from the crowd. "Influencia do Jazz", which
decries US influence on samba, but was played at 1962's crucial Concert for
Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall, sees him languidly sing the word "jazz" in a
way that's loaded with its one-time meaning, when it was a lifestyle and
ethic that reached down to Brazil.

Guitarist Roberto Menescal, a white-haired veteran himself now but once a
student of Jobim and Joao Gilberto, joins Sixties star Wanda Sa in
child-like scats that turn into joyful, unaggressive dance music, which
offers, rather than demands, rhythmic movement. Sa and flautist Ricardo
Pontes are more crucial to the beat than the drums.

Clara Moreno's husky vocals show why the Portuguese language, which smears
consonants and skips vowels, fits this smooth-rolling music. Flirty yet
formal as she sashays in a red backless dress, she is another Ipanema girl.
The hippie-like Marcos Valle, who, with Vinicius Cantuaria, represents
bossa's later entwining with Brazilian rock, plays something nearing early
Seventies US funk, conjuring yet another imaginary nightclub from another
long-gone time.

Joao Donato, a pianist contemporary of Jobim, is the most impressive
performer. In the highest jazz traditions, his vivid riffs lock into other
band-members' parts at will. Although Joyce returns to sing with him, it is
Donato's William Basie-like understated mastery that is riveting.

Finally, of course, there is "Girl from Ipanema". Its lyrics are almost the
only English ones tonight, but it is the bridge that took bossa nova to the
world. Everyone joins in, in a predictably ramshackle but engaging finale.
While the diversity of the night's elements has inevitably stopped real,
building drama, the standing ovation is for what this music has given
Brazil, and the world.

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