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Thiago de Mello

Gaudencio Thiago de Mello (Barreirinha, state of Amazonas, 1933 - New York, 2013) was a NY-based Brazilian composer, arranger, conductor, band leader (founder of the Amazon big band which performed all Sunday nights at Sweet Basil-NY during the 1980s) and multi-instrumentalist (piano, acoustic guitar, percussion). He was brother of poet Amadeu Thiago de Mello.

Thiago got Grammy nominations for albums he recorded with Paul Winter and Sharon Isbin. He also recorded several albums with Brazilian jazz singer Ithamara Koorax (with whom he also toured in both Brazil and USA) as well as with Luiz Bonfa, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Dexter Payne, Susannah McCorcle, Claudio Roditi, Carlos Pingarilho, Jorge Pescara, Anna Ly and many others. Thiago also developed a fruitful collaboration with record producer Arnaldo DeSouteiro, who signed him for the Los Angeles-based label Jazz Station Records (JSR) in 1999. Their partnership lasted till Thiago passed away in 2013.


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357
Album Review

Ithamara Koorax: Brazilian Butterfly

Read "Brazilian Butterfly" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Except for two ballads--the cosmopolitan “Carinhoso with her Brazilian jazz fusion compatriots Azymuth, and Herbie Hancock's title track--Ithamara Koorax's ninth album is her most adventurous release. It seems constructed to honor legendary Brazilian vocalist Flora Purim and her husband/bandleader/percussionist Airto. This Brazilian Butterfly soars and flutters while multiple percussionists (often as many as four on the same song, most often led by the late and legendary Dom Um Romão, with Koorax frequently flailing away among them) knit together, pull apart, ...

345
Album Review

Thiago de Mello & Dexter Payne: Another Feeling

Read "Another Feeling" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Have you ever walked alone through a quiet beautiful woodland and stepped into an open space full of nothing but warm and growing brightness, and felt like nature was a cathedral and you were seated in its front row? Another Feeling sounds just like that: completely, naturally, immaculate and beautiful.

Dexter Payne on clarinet and alto saxophone creates this Feeling with writer/ arranger Thiago de Mello on acoustic piano, guitar and “organic percussion, handmade instruments personally crafted from ...

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