Jazz Articles about Nilson Matta

About Nilson Matta

Album Review

Diego Figueiredo: I Love Samba

Read "I Love Samba" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 26, 2025

One upside to Brazilian-born guitarist Diego Figueiredo's latest album, I Love Samba, is that the title says it all. In case you are unfamiliar with Figueiredo, you should know that he not only loves samba, he also plays samba--quite well--and has entertained audiences in more than sixty countries around the world doing exactly that. And while he is only in his mid-forties, I Love Samba brings the number of CDs Figueiredo has under his belt as leader of his own ...

Liner Notes

Nilson Matta's Brazilian Voyage: Copacabana

by Howard Mandel
July 26, 2023

Everyone wants to go to Brazil, and one of the easiest, most pleasant ways of doing so is to listen to bassist Nilson Matta's Brazilian Voyage. The third album organized by Matta, a native of Sao Paolo who moved to Rio in 1970 and the U.S. in 1985, conjures the vistas and moods of a country that is idealized as a source of breezy airs and pulsing rhythms. That Brazil in fact even more than in myth generates ...

Liner Notes

Trio Da Paz: 30

by Howard Mandel
March 27, 2023

Only very special collaborations last 30 years, and rarely do they become more exciting and together over the decades. Trio da Paz, however, is one such long-lasting and still lightning band. The team of drummer Duduka Da Fonseca, guitarist Romero Lubambo and bassist Nilson Matta, all Brasilian jazzmen of New York City, is just as dashing today as when the three first met in 1985. So 30 , their seventh album, wastes no time glancing back. Rather, Trio ...

Album Review

The Brazilian Trio: Águas Brasileiras

Read "Águas Brasileiras" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 2, 2021

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. ...

Album Review

Trio Da Paz: 30

by Dan Bilawsky
January 14, 2016

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 ...

Album Review

Nilson Matta: EastSideRioDrive

Read "EastSideRioDrive" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 25, 2015

Many a bassist is renowned or applauded for the way they serve as ballast in a band, but what of the bassists who go the other way, providing lift instead of weight? There are precious few of them out there, but Nilson Matta is one one of them. Matta, whether working with the collectively-operated Trio Da Paz, backing cellist Yo-Yo Ma, playing with any number of legendary jazz figures, or working his own projects, tends to do something that few ...

Album Review

Nilson Matta: Nilson Matta's Black Orpheus

Read "Nilson Matta's Black Orpheus" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 28, 2013

Brazilian bassist Nilson Matta has, like all artists, has drawn inspiration for his music from a variety of sources--of which a play and a movie serve as the influence for the moving Black Orpheus. Antonio Carlos Jobim's compositions for the 1957 Vinicius de Moraes Brazilian play Orfeu da Conceicao and the 1959 Black Orpheus movie that went on to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is beautifully and tastefully reimagined here with the benefit of an all-star ...