Jazz Articles about Antonio Adolfo

About Antonio Adolfo

Album Review

It might be expected that everything one might want to say or write or play about Antonio Carlos Jobim and his music would have been done already. Apparently not. Pianist and friend Antonio Adolfo wanted to go back to the period of the 1960s, to record those Jobim compositions that Adolfo fell in love with as a teenager. Hence the music covered by Jobim Forever comprises those well known ear worms that lit up the bossa nova movement. ...

Album Review

Phill Fest: Cafe Fon Fon

Read "Cafe Fon Fon" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 3, 2021

While there is no sure cure for the blues, a large dose of Brazilian music often comes about as close to driving the dark clouds away as any remedy a physician is likely to prescribe. It is hard to listen to an album such as guitarist-composer Phill Fest's sunny Café Fon Fon without smiling and tapping your toes as misery and sadness bid their goodbyes. Who could resist the urge to grin while listening, for example, to his rhythmic salute ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento

Read "BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
August 13, 2020

Antonio Adolfo and Milton Nascimento are two legends of Brazilian music. These individuals have had a long history of friendship and appreciation, so it should come as no surprise that Adolfo decided to put together an album dedicated to the music of Nascimento. Hence BruMa : Celebrating Milton Nascimento. The reach and influence of singer/songwriter Milton Nascimento stretches far beyond his native Brazil. Among his many achievements are Grammy Nominations, and Down Beat Polls. Many of his compositions ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento

Read "BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
August 7, 2020

Brazilian performer/composer Milton Nascimento has given the pop, jazz, contemporary and rock worlds an amazon of music that is almost impossible to comprehend in its entirety. With BruMa pianist-composer Antonio Adolfo and a cadre of outstanding Brazilian musicians he provides a highly stylized, exotic and utterly brilliant Grammy-worthy exploration of Nascimento's works. This album is so inviting and the performances so seductive that the entire album screams to be devoured in one luscious conceptual bite. “Fe Cega ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: Samba Jazz Alley

Read "Samba Jazz Alley" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
June 30, 2019

With this album, Antonio Adolfo, an early exponent of bossa nova, takes a look at the roots of the music in his hometown, Rio de Janeiro. He recalls: “From 1958 to 1965 a small alley in the Copacabana district became known as Beco das Garrafas, Bottles Alley, because neighbours in taller buildings used to throw bottles down from their apartments in protest at the loud music and boisterous conversation coming from below. It was like a cauldron of jazz, samba ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: Encontros - Orquestra Atlantica

Read "Encontros - Orquestra Atlantica" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
August 14, 2018

Big bands are a rarity in Brazilian jazz. Nonetheless pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo says he dreamed for 40 years of making an album with a world-class big band. His dream comes true with Encontroas--Orquestra Atlantica. While a relatively new and untried aggregate, on the evidence of this excellent, always interesting album, the Atlantica look set to become a major force at home and abroad. Under Adolfo's leadership, the band performs nine of his own songs plus the Miles ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: Encontros - Orquestra Atlantica

Read "Encontros - Orquestra Atlantica" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 2018

After forty years of gigging around the world with a who's who of jazz instrumentalists and singers, the celebrated Brazilian pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo has realized his life-long dream of writing for and recording with a world-class big band--and what a band it is: the remarkable Orquestra Atlantica from Adolfo's home country, formed in 2012 and molded since then into a superior ensemble fully capable of carrying out his every wish and desire. On Encontros, the Orquestra adeptly ...