Marcos Resende & Index: Marcos Resende & Index

This debut, eponymous recording by Brazilian keyboard wizard Marcos Resende was recorded in Rio de Janeiro in late summer 1976. This was a truly glorious time for progressive instrumental music in Brazil, as you can hear in the discographies of Eumir Deodato, Marcos Valle, Airto Moreira and many other artists.

Resende put together a new quartet, equally adept in jazz and Brazilian rhythms, for these sessions: Rhythm aces Rubão Sabino (bass) and Claudio Caribé (drums), plus legendary reedman Oberdan Magalhães, who was also organizing in Rio the legendary samba-funk Banda Black Rio at this time. Resende also recruited session engineer Toninho Barbosa, whose recordings with Azymuth (Light as a Feather, Milestone 1979), João Donato (Quem É Quem, Odeon, 1973) and others earned him the title, "the Brazilian Rudy Van Gelder." Even so, Marcos Resende & Index remained unreleased and unheard until this 2021 remastered issue.

With the opening "My Heart," Resende immediately drops you into a liquid, luxurious pond where you bob and float on soft percussion, bass as quick and nimble as a cat, rippling electric keyboards and waves of other exotic sounds. Resende's keyboard solo explores jazz without breaking its deep connection to the Brazilian rhythm, propelled by the percussion percolating underneath.

Marcos Resende & Index builds from this opener into an eight-minute piece ("Praça da Alegria"), then a nine-("Nergal") and then ten-minute piece ("Martina"). This masterful sequencing creates a feeling of a genuine musical journey, and of arrival at your destination.

First, Resende blasts off from the crackling bass and percussion opening "Praça da Alegria" into an electrifying keyboard solo that freely wheels and deals the galvanizing sound of classic 1970s Brazilian jazz records from Chick Corea, George Duke, and other keyboardists. The rhythm section slows the pace just enough for Magalhães' saxophone to spread sweetness and light like honey on top.

"Nergal" opens like an expansive, wide-open prairie which the leader fills with colorful space-age yet soulful electric jazz sounds spanning from Soft Machine to Sergio Mendes to Richard Wright (Pink Floyd), and then a blast of horns clears out the arrangement for another keyboard solo that sounds more like electric guitar from the Grover Washington, Jr. soul playbook, the bass and drums click back into their circular rhythm track, and "Nergal" winds down to its stop.

A remarkable arrangement, "Martina" moves through about six different movements in ten minutes. It blossoms into a light but heavily Brazilian groove, with percussion chattering like little woodland creatures hiding in the thicket of the mix, and Resende and Magalhães respectively rip into keyboard and saxophone solos that fracture and splatter notes like Keith Jarrett and Gary Bartz barnstorming in one of Miles Davis' electric quintets. Magalhães' flute dances from section to section like a fluttering bird or butterfly—sounding and feeling Light as a Feather.