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Jazz Articles about Duduka Da Fonseca
The Brazilian Trio: Águas Brasileiras
by Dan Bilawsky
Brazilian waters beckon with their beauty and energies, and this trio serves as a perfect vessel to carry the ears across that aqua viva. Pianist Helio Alves, bassist Nilson Matta and drummer Duduka Da Fonseca--three Brazilian heavies long based in New York—have played together in different configurations and situations for decades. And when they first banded together under this appellation for Forests (Zoho Music, 2008), they quickly earned the respect they so richly deserve by netting a Latin Grammy nomination. ...
Continue ReadingDuduka Da Fonseca & Helio Alves featuring Maucha Adnet: Samba Jazz & Tom Jobim
by Dan Bilawsky
Since 2007, drummer Duduka Da Fonseca, pianist Helio Alves and vocalist Maucha Adnet have been presenting the titular program at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at other venues throughout the world. A concept set steeped in personalized history of varied sorts--Da Fonseca's, absorbing this hybridized style at the foot of the masters in Brazil; Adnet's and Da Fonseca's, working with the late Antonio Carlos Jobim; Alves' and Da Fonseca's, playing together in bands ...
Continue ReadingBack to Brazil: Part Two
by Mark Holston
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Part Two of this series on recent Brazilian-influenced releases continues with further discussion of the Samba Jazz genre. The style's heyday, from the early to mid-1960s, produced what Brazilian music critics consider to be landmark recordings. The early champions of the instrumental and more jazz-oriented version of Bossa Nova included such pioneers as pianist Sérgio Mendes and his Bossa Rio Septet; baritone saxophonist Moacir Santos; drummers Dom Um Romão, Milton ...
Continue ReadingJazz at Kitano: Duduka Da Fonseca and Brazilian Express
by Nick Catalano
Brazilian percussionist Duduka Da Fonseca has led a variety of groups in Gotham venues for the past several years, performing the wildly popular samba music he learned growing up in Rio de Janeiro. His December 8 performance at The Kitano Hotel lounge in New York City was a high point of the holiday season, celebrating the music of pianist Dom Salvador. Fourteen-year-old Da Fonseca would play along with Salvador's album Rio 65 Trio (Philips, 1965). Da Fonseca and Brazilian Express ...
Continue ReadingDuduka Da Fonseca: Duduka Da Fonseca Trio Plays Dom Salvador
by Dan Bilawsky
It would be something of an understatement to say that the music of pianist Dom Salvador served as a formative influence for drummer Duduka Da Fonseca. As a teenage musician, Da Fonseca absorbed every phrase and nuance that drummer Edison Machado put to wax on Salvador's immortal Rio 65 Trio (Philips, 1965). That recording, and that trio, would come to serve as a primer for the budding Da Fonseca, schooling him on samba jazz and setting him up for a ...
Continue ReadingTrio Da Paz: 30
by Dan Bilawsky
Time really does fly when you're having fun. Just ask Trio da Paz. Guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta, and drummer Duduka Da Fonseca are celebrating three decades of togetherness with the aptly-titled 30. It's a collection of music that, like the best of their work, finds them merging the sounds of Brazil with the attitude of The Big Apple, creating Brazilian jazz that finds the perfect balance between the two poles in that genre's name. Past ...
Continue ReadingDuduka Da Fonseca Trio: Jive Samba
by Dan Bilawsky
The continually evolving relationship between American jazz and Brazilian music is firm proof that the power of influence often travels in two directions. Todd Barkan's liner notes for Jive Samba touch on this fact by discussing the way that these musical forces have been blending and influencing one another for more than nine decades, going all the way back to when Brazilian choro giant Pixinguinha fell for jazz and rubbed shoulders with Louis Armstrong during a six-month stay in Paris ...
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