Chico Buarque February 26, 2008
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized, brazil, brazilian, popular , add a comment
The songwriter/singer/novelist Chico Buarque has a career spanning decades and including collaborations with the top figures in Brazilian music, including Tom Jobim, but although he is part of the pantheon south of the Equator, he is very little known in the United States, for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, the balance between verbal play and musical ingenuity in his songs tilts toward the former, not because the musical content is weak, but because the lyrics are incomparable. This means that listeners who might be able to appreciate the work of Caetano Veloso, a flamboyant performer and a composer whose music draws more on international styles, even without understanding what he is singing about, may find it hard to discover a way into the large and diverse oeuvre of Chico Buarque, whose songs require a deep knowledge of the Portuguese language. In addition, Buarque performs rarely, whether inside Brazil or out. (It is noteworthy that there is one article on Buarque in the NY Times, by the foreign correspondent in Rio, as compared with dozens on Veloso).
The Music Library has just acquired a 21-CD collection of Buarque’s recordings, as well as nine DVDs. There could be almost no better reason for brushing up your Portuguese.
DVD 691, DVD 901, DVD 902 and CD 16101-16122
Jobim February 14, 2008
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American popular music and Brazilian popular music are so different from each other that even though American music is popular in Brazil and Brazilian music is popular in the United States it is hard to describe one in terms of the other. Particuarly difficult is the case of Antonio Carlos Jobim, identified in the US with bossa nova, though his career spanned five decades. Who could one compare him with among American composers? Along with Chico Buarque, from the generation after his, Jobim was certainly the most important and beloved songwriter of the second half of the twentieth century in Brazil. His most well-known song was Girl from Ipanema, but the one which seems inexhaustible in its simplicity is Waters of March (Águas de Março), for which the composer wrote lyrics both in Portuguese and English, with the English being far from a simple translation of the Portuguese.
Our Music Library now has four volumes of the Complete Works curated by the family of the late composer.
Cancioneiro Jobim: M1690.18 J63 C36 2001, M1690.18 J63 C36 2007
Attention song-lovers! February 14, 2008
Posted by Tom Moore in : brazil, brazilian, song , add a comment
Among the gems purchased for the Music Library in Brazil last fall is a volume of the complete songs of Antonio Carlos Gomes, Brazil’s first successful opera composer, and still the only Brazilian to have an international opera career, with one opera after another produced at La Scala in Milan. Ricordi, in addition to publishing the scores for his operas, also issued three collections of songs (totaling 19) in Italian. Those, plus another 22 songs, in both Italian and Portuguese, are offered in score, with notes on the pieces, the texts, and two CDs with performances of all the songs. Among the charmers: “Conselhos”, advice to a young woman intending to wed by “Dr. Experienced Older Man”.
Gomes, Minhas Pobres Canções - M1620 G653
Wissick & Willis February 11, 2008
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Brent Brent Wissick & Andrew Willis, reviewed.
Much More Miles February 8, 2008
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized , add a commentI posted here last fall about a newly-released collection of live sessions by the great Miles Davis (Miles Davis: The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 - CD 15434). The Music Library has now added another retrospective box, this time of studio recordings from the first half of the 1970s (The Complete On the Corner Sessions). Where the classic “In a Silent Way” (also in a box, The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions, CD 8173) was meditative, lyrical, tranquil, beautiful, much of the music Miles made in the period before he took an extended break from playing and recording in the mid-seventies was loud, aggressive, in your face, exploring the beauty of ugliness, and exploiting hot repetitive rhythms. If In a Silent Way was Yin, On the Corner was Yang with a vengeance, reflecting the conflict of the struggles of the day, and the violence of the war in Vietnam. Not everything in the box is at the highest level, but some of it is not to be missed (check out the churning funk of “Rated X”, originally issued on the LP “Get up with it”.) Miles’s sidemen include Herbie Hancock and John McLaughlin, with many others.
Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions - CD-15529
