Biddle Beat » brazil

Chico Buarque

Tom Moore — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:47:35 +0000

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

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Attention song-lovers!

Tom Moore — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:22:18 +0000

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

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