Claudia Villela: Cartas ao Vento

Cartas ao Vento marks a return and a departure for Claudia Villela. Born in Rio, she moved to Santa Cruz in 1984, where she has remained. Years later, this is her first album made in Brazil. Villela has gained recognition in California and beyond as an intrepid improviser with a beautiful voice who creates captivating live shows. With Cartas ao Vento, she changes direction, focusing on composing. "I wanted everything to be part of the song," she explains, "to get away from the solo as a virtuoso statement."

She wrote all of the pieces, including lyrics for six, and set poetry by Celia Malheiros, Ana Christina Cesar, Mário Quintana, and Ramon Palomares for the remainder. Featured on the album are high-school friends who have gone on to have admirable musical careers, including bassist Jorge Helder, drummer Marcelo Costa, and arranger-guitarist Mario Adnet, along with such other distinguished musicians as guitarists Romero Lubambo and Toninho Horta, flutist-saxophonist Edu Neves, and accordionist Vitor Gonçalves.

The title cut, "Cartas ao Vento" (Letters to the Wind) sets the tone. Commissioned by San Jose Jazz's Jazz Aid Fund during the pandemic, it premiered in their New Works Fest (2021). "Cartas ao Vento is about saudade," Villela explained. Lyrics reference a suitcase packed for a homeward journey, thoughts of family and friends, a hammock. The quintessentially Brazilian sound of the cuica identifies the track from the intro, mingled with Gonçalves' reflective accordion. The piece releases into a gently rolling samba at the head and concludes with the whistled call of a uirapuru, an endangered Amazon rainforest wren. (See YouTube teaser, bottom of page.)

When improvising, Villela describes an altered state, a sort of trance wherein she "channels" memories: the voice of the bottle collector on the street where she grew up, the "lullaby" of the samba bateria rehearsing behind her grandmother's house. For a taste of this, check her improvisation on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Stone Flower" (SF Jazz YouTube 2019). She channels a blind man in the neighborhood, a specific figure from her youth.

Analogously, remembered musical voices seem to flow in and out of her compositions. "Chorinho pra Elas," for instance, nods to Hermeto Pascoal's "Chorinho pra Ele." Some of her best work on Cartas ao Vento sets existing poetry. One of the most striking tracks on the album is her setting of "Instrumento" by Mário Quintana, Brazil's "poet of simple things." Zé Nogueira's duduk dominates, resonating in the chest. The timbre of this Armenian double-reed aerophone, this 'apricot tree pipe,' is haunting. Combined with her alto-register minor-mode melody, the ostinato bass, and tresillo rhythmic underpinning, the feel she creates is akin to Ladino repertoire of Israeli singer Yasmin Levy. The lines, "I am not the music, I am an instrument" resonate with experiences Villela has described, when she feels she is a medium for the music.

Cartas ao Vento is a wonderful album, a program of engaging songs performed by outstanding musicians, well worth repeated spins.