The Path of a Brazilian Instrumentalist
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Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 7, No 1 (2011) In Memoriam Pushing at Boundaries: The Path of a Brazilian Instrumentalist Cliff Korman In homage to my mestre Paulo Moura, clarinetist/saxophonist, arranger, composer, improviser, visionary: July 15, 1932—July 12, 2010. Credit: 2007 © Alex Almeida. Presentation with Cliff Korman at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro His career spanned six decades, from the late 1940s through 2010, and his compositions, arrangements, and recordings can now be considered vital documents of many of the most important trends in twentieth-century Brazilian music. Paulo Moura, the youngest of a family of musicians, began at twelve years of age to play the clarinet professionally with his father’s band in the gafieira dance halls of their hometown in the interior of São Paulo state. He moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro—Brazil’s center of urban music—in 1945. He studied classical theory, harmony, and clarinet at the Escola Nacional de Música and at the same time had his first contact with modern jazz through informal listening and playing sessions, both at the home of an acquaintance who lived near Moura’s neighborhood of Tijuca and as a frequent participant of the Sinatra-Farney fan club (1948-53). He soon made his mark as a versatile instrumentalist, working as a studio musician and in radio orchestras where he had contact with the top-tier arrangers, composers, and conductors who would inform his musical language and conception, and in the gafieira dance halls that he would eventually use as a platform for his transformative and contemporary view of the genre. He also performed as a soloist with the symphony orchestra of the Teatro Municipal (with which, from 1959-1979, he was featured in classical works for clarinet) and with big bands and popular music orchestras that accompanied visiting international artists such as Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. Along with a group of musicians that included João Donato and Johnny Alf (pianist/composers), Mauricio Einhorn (harmonica/composer), and Dom um Romão and Edson Machado (drummers), he was taken by the sound and language of American jazz artists of the era and worked to develop a similar fluency as an improviser. As a participant in the emerging bossa and samba-jazz movements, he performed, arranged for, and recorded with Sergio Mendes’ Bossa Jazz ensemble. He traveled with this group to New York to participate in the famous “Bossa Nova: (New Brazilian Jazz)” concert at Carnegie Hall on November 21, 1962. Less than a month after that performance, the group went into a New York studio to record with the famous American jazz artist Cannonball Adderley.1 1 Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 7, No 1 (2011) It was at this juncture in his career that Moura’s need to seek out the new, to transform and grow as an artist, first became evident. Not satisfied to ride the wave of bossa nova, he refused to settle into predictable and repetitive projects. His recognition that his most profound and inspiring source material lay in Brazilian culture led him to experiment with, champion, and revitalize a wide variety of genres, including choro, gafieira, afro-samba, samba-jazz, and música erudita brasileira. His projects of the 1960s and 1970s represent the work of an inquisitive and innovative artist dedicated to both excellence and growth, epitomized by his recordings Quarteto (1968), Hepteto: Mensagem (1968), Fibra (1971), and Confusão Urbana, Suburbana, e Rural (1976).2 His collaborations with Brazilian and international artists resulted in work that combined idioms, created new fusions, and opened paths to new musical vocabularies, while at the same time maintaining the defining characteristics of the Brazilian music and jeito that he embodied.3 Moura’s repertoire included pieces by Radames Gnatalli, Pixinguinha, Jacob de Bandolim, K-Ximbinho, Milton Nascimento, Charlie Parker, and George Gershwin, as well as his own arrangements and compositions that became staples of his performances. His soundscape was often broadened by a fascination with classical and contemporary music that, toward the end of his life, gravitated strongly toward the work of György Ligeti and Karlheinz Stockhausen and toward experimentation with graphic scores designed to foster improvisation. Although the remainder of this text has everything to do with improvisation, it will have little to do with note choice, harmonic paths, and the ability to turn a perfect phrase in the moment of performance. Paulo had accepted and met those challenges early in his career when, in the 1950s, he and a number of Brazilian musicians considered how to interact with contemporary approaches to jazz improvisation. The new developments augmented his already evolved interest in American jazz musicians who had emerged in an earlier era (Barney Bigard, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington) and coincided with his awareness of the advances of Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Horace Silver, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, who were creating a stir within certain circles of Rio’s music scene. Paulo was immersed in a dynamic and contemporary language of improvisation, one that occurred worldwide amongst musicians who considered themselves jazz practitioners. For Paulo, it was a way of considering sound and introducing new kinds of intentions in performance. The ability to understand, internalize, and transform the information he gleaned from U.S. American jazz was a fundamental part of his personal language. Paulo and I met at the Creative Music Studio’s five-week World Music Seminar in 1981.4 I attended as a student and he participated as one of a rotating group of teachers. We hit it off immediately, maintained contact in the ensuing years, and first performed as a duo in 1995. Although we came from different generations, different cultures, and different countries, we shared a few important things. Each of us was steeped in what I’ve come to call the “Popular Instrumental Improvised Music” of our respective traditions. We also shared a love for each other’s worlds: he for the sound, swing, and repertoire of American jazz; and I for similar components in the Brazilian popular expressions of choro, gafieira, samba, and bossa nova. Finally, we both believed that improvisation exists not only in sections designated for melodic invention, but also in the essence of an approach that permeates every moment of performance. From our first rehearsals and presentations, we sensed an empathy and musical understanding between us that we knew deserved nurturing. As our relationship developed, we began to consider our work a reflection of our respective cultures of origin and a celebration of the links we found between them: rhythms, melodic fragments, mood, swing. The raison d’être of our duo was a constant search for common ground on which to explore these links—a common playground, if you will. We filled it with the standard repertoire from Brazilian and American songbooks, with the vast library of popular instrumental music from Brazil and the U.S., and with original compositions that freely crossed styles and genres. Sections meant for melodic improvisation were often based on song forms, although they also relied on harmonic interludes created to provide contrast and variety (e.g., a piano solo of “Tico Tico” discussed below). Before a performance—especially if a long time had passed since the previous one—we would spend some hours rehearsing, sometimes reworking material, adding repertoire, or simply getting back in our groove. In spite of all of this preparation, I never felt quite certain of where the adventure would lead as we entered each stage. Paulo was unpredictable in the best of ways: he was very willing to take risks—to “throw curveballs”—and, at the same time, was seemingly quite certain that everything would work out. His serenity, eventually, was infectious. I carry with me the memory of our last moments on stage together. This memory is multi-faceted, its elements visual, auditory, tactile: it conjures a sense of the breath and spirit of the musician channeled through his clarinet, an instrument that he loved, and from which he teased a myriad of subtle variations of expression. I knew that he was struggling with a cancer that would soon take his body, but had no idea how close we were to his passing. What I felt, as his pianist and sparring partner, and what struck me with great certainty and impact, was that Paulo had reached yet another level of expression. Though still attentive to the details of melody, harmony, and arrangement, his performance was now focused on the essence of his artistic intent—on gesture and sound. 2 Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 7, No 1 (2011) To illustrate, I’ll describe a few moments from our last duo performance, which took place at the Espaço Centroequatro in Belo Horizonte, Brazil on May 8, 2010, two months before Paulo passed away. With a focus on sound, pulse, and time flow, I’ll attempt to recreate my thoughts and my decision-making process as I shared the stage with this creative and vital musician. For examples, I’ve chosen performances (of the songs “Travessia,” by Milton Nascimento and Fernando Brant, and “Tico Tico no Fuba,” by Zequinha de Abreu) that poignantly represent the immediacy and joy of the experience I was so fortunate to live. I remember well my impression as we left the stage: Paulo had led us into new territory, and in doing so had asked me to reconsider my role as an accompanist, to change my approach from one that provided a harmonic and rhythmic foundation—something of a chão (floor)—to one that was more contrapuntal in terms of both melody line and rhythm, and certainly less predictable.