Gabriela Machado: Equilibrando no Acupe

Choro's popularity is on the rise. In the US, camps like Brazil Camp, Choro Northwest (aka Centrum Choro Workshop), Choro Camp New England and programs like Antonio Adolfo's Brazilian Music Workshop have attracted top artist-teachers, and eager students have brought the genre back to their local communities. Equilibrando no Acupe, a program of original choro compositions, was born into this 21st-century global market, with fans in and outside of Brazil.

Gabriela Machado lives in Salvador da Bahia, where she is completing a PhD in Music Education at the Federal University and teaching choro performance practices and rhythmic styles to music students. Born in the São Paulo area, she remained there until 2022, establishing a solid profile as a performer, session musician, orchestral player and choro scholar. She divides her time between the two cities, a balancing act she reflects in the title of her debut as a composer-band leader, Equilibrando no Acupe (Balancing in Acupe, her Salvador neighborhood).

Equilibrando no Acupe is a mainstream choro project, but with a contemporary flavor. Straight up, we hear the exhilarating timbre of Celso Benedito's French horn, a novel feature. The Pixinguinha-inspired choro counterpoint is there in Emiliano Castro's wonderfully fluid baixeria, and Machado covers the sub-genre bases by including choro sambada/gafieira ("Equilibrando no Acupe"), maxixe ("Filho do Tango, Maxixe É?" and "Salada de Maxixe"), waltz ("Valsinha pra Você"), polca ("Segura a Polca"), baião ("Baiãozinho Sertanejo"), frevo ("Passistiné") and samba ("Pras Mestras") in the mix.

Machado's melodies, structures and rhythmic feels belong to the choro classico nexus, but she bakes opportunities for soloistic improvisation into the compositions, making them subtly jazzier. In this respect, she aligns with jazz-informed Brazilian chorões like 7-string guitarist Douglas Lora (who works with Anat Cohen, Trio Brasileiro and other groups) and flutist-saxophonist Edu Neves (on recordings like Stephen Guerra's No Balanço do Choro-Samba and elsewhere). Add to that list pianists like Amilton Godoy and Adolfo on the Brazilian jazz/música instrumental brasileira side and, in the North American jazz stream, pianists Cliff Korman and Renee Rosnes, drummer Alex Kautz, Hamilton de Holanda and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, among others.

This is not your grandmother's choro, strictly speaking, but composer Chiquinha Gonzaga would recognize it as choro, even without the little bread-crumb quotes Machado provides. Yet a 21st-century aficionado might perceive a touch of jazz in her arrangements, in Nailor Proveta Azevedo's clarinet, Debora Gurgel's piano, Douglas Alonso and Guegué Medeiros' drums, even Matheus Kleber's accordion. And cavaquinista Camila Silva's work adds resonance to the ensemble's sonic acknowledgment of the idiom's African and indigenous roots.

"Pras Mestras" is at the heart of the project, as a "valorization and gratitude to my female references." Machado dedicates the album to the many women who have inspired her. In conversation with AAJ, she expressed her pleasure at having been able to bring three generations of feminine masters together for the recording: Gurgel, the eldest; Silva, the youngest; Machado in the middle. Over the years, many of her teachers have been women, and she has worked with many women musicians, including the group Choronas, which she founded in 1994 with cavaquinista Ana Cláudia César, guitarist Paola Picherzky and percussionist Roseli Câmara.

There is still work to be done to achieve parity for women in the discipline, she says, but she speaks of "a movement" in Brazil, where women support each other as composers, performers and teachers. She is happy to describe it as a kind of "affirmative action," a corrective that opens the field and, as Equilibrando no Acupe attests, enriches the aesthetic.

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