Nilson Matta - Brazilian Voyage

Green Heart Record Release Party Featuring Nilson Matta And Zé Luis
December 17, 2007
By Mark Keating
Joe's Pub
New York City
Genre: Brazilian

On Dec. 17, New York's Joe's Pub hosted the release party for the first CD issued by the fledgling Brazilian/American indie music label New Orbita. Green Heart is a compilation of instrumental Brazilian contemporary music whose stated goal is to raise environmental awareness and provide a "green" business model for music production, distribution and touring.

Headlining that night were two of the record's three luminaries: bassist Nilson Matta and flautist Zé Luis Oliveira (drummer Paulo Braga and his band complete the Green Heart compilation).

Matta kicked off the evening with one of his own compositions from the disk, an engaging samba titled "Paraty," named after the historic coastal city sited between Rio de Janiero and São Paulo. Founded in colonial times, Paraty is now green Brazil's "Emerald City," where horses and bicycles are the transportation, and parks designated as nature preserves encompass the city. With Klaus Mueller on piano and Mauricio Zottarelli on drums, Matta extended a hearty samba welcome to a city of optimism, with his nimble command of the double bass driving the upbeat melody. After deconstructing the tune with a solo improv, Matta led his trio home with a calorie-burning showcase that had him dabbing sweat from his brow.

Removing his jacket, Matta said, "I feel like a tropical bird." He began another of his compositions, "Forests," which Matta explained was inspired by the Amazon rain forest. Having established a scene of urban conviviality, the trio now entered a quieter place where melodic fragments hovered untethered from any rhythm by the bass. The piece was a narrative of exploratory intrigue, building slowly until an assertive 5/4 rhythm segued into "Green Heart," the Matta-penned title song from the compilation CD.

Matta closed his set with "Baden," his high-strutting tribute to guitarist Baden Powell. Here, the trio was lit in primary colors of red, yellow and blue with Matta and his double bass centerstage. Starting like a runaway jazzed-up carnavale, they morphed into a baroque theme that took the crowd by surprise. If Haydn had ever attempted a jazz choro, it might have sounded like this.

It was with this cheerful air that Matta finished his set, after which he introduced his friend Zé Luis, playfully describing him as "mature."


For the event's third and final act, Nilson Matta joined Zé Luis on the stage accompanied by special guest, guitar virtuoso Toninho Horta. Here, the three men performed as an augmented trio, beginning their set with Jobim's timeless anthem, "Wave." The notes from Horta's acoustic guitar had a pearly gleam as he picked them, however the flattened chords he used to begin his "Viver de Amor" was the closest the night came to a rock-and-roll moment. Matta proved a formidable accompanist during Horta's "Aquelas Coisas Todas," with a fluttering bass line anchoring Horta's runs on the guitar.

Acknowledging the cheering crowd, the ensemble launched into Baden Powell's "Berimbau" for the finale, a moment that was MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) in its full glory.

Had there been any curiosity about the linkage between Brazilian music and environmentalism, it seemed put to rest by the end of the show. As Matta had explained earlier in the evening, bossa nova didn't need to adapt itself to "green" consciousness, it was always there. Through the efforts of New Orbita, the soundtrack for preservation need not only be the sober ruminations of Sting or the eleventh-hour alarm of save-the-planet DJ parties. It could also be a sound we have enjoyed for years. The sound of Brazil—a country that, as of last year, attained energy self-sufficiency, and today is poised to take that show on the road.


This is a band that I created to play for an important convention about Brazilian Culture at Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City. I enjoyed playing so much the repertory based in a different region of Brazil that has its own particular style of music and its own rhythmic patterns, that I decided to maintain the name Brazilian Voyage and the band as well.

Since then every time promoters or clubs offer me a gig I call some great musicians and I put Nilson Matta - Brazilian Voyage together to play my originals songs and the Brazilian songbook. The band has been performed in Music Festivals, Jazz Clubs and Private Events.

Because people are always asking me about when the first band CD will be released I decided to go to the studio this year and record the Brazilian Voyage material we have been playing since we started and of course new compositions I have written for the band.

We expect to have our first CD ready in September 2008.

REVIEW

JAZZ Review
By Don Heckman
Special to The Times
Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, February 28, 2006


Voyaging into parallel expressions of sound

It was carnival time over the weekend, and sequined and feathered dancers – in sync with celebrations throughout Brazil – were vibrating to the rhythms of the samba from the Queen Mary to the Palladium, Always a hedonist’s delight, it was a weekend loaded with sensory stimuli.
On Sunday afternoon, it also was a time to experience another aspect of Brazil’s rich culture through the music of the group Brazilian Voyage. Performing at the Rising Jazz Stars Foundation in Beverly Hills, the quartet – guitarist Romero Lubambo, pianist Helio Alves, bassist Nilson Matta and drummer Chris Eddleton – illuminated the romance between jazz and Brazilian music that has been finding new forms of expression for more than a half century.
Brazilian Voyage, performing originals of Lubambo, Alves and Matta as well as Luiz Bonfa “Manhã de Carnaval” they played with stunning élan, improvising freely over of Brazilian rhythms.
Most fascinating, however, was the clear sense of this unique Brazilian take on jazz. Only loosely connected with the blues roots so important to American Jazz, it is more indebted to the fast-paced, virtuosic techniques of choro, the early (and still very much alive) Brazilian music roughly parallel to New Orleans jazz. Swinging in their own fashion, generating quick-paced melodies and sudden rhythmic accents the Brazilian Voyage player affirmed the capacity of jazz to become a global form of musical expression.