Celso Fonseca

Lee Ritenour & Dave Grusin: Brasil

by Edward Blanco
August 18, 2024

Friends and musical partners since the '70s, guitarist Lee Ritenour and pianist Dave Grusin continue their collaboration on Brasil, thanks to Ritenour's Brazilian wife Carmen, who was influential in recommending the project, and to the many outstanding Brazilian players who grace the album. Though the repertoire contains two Ritenour originals and one from Grusin, the producers draw on such Brazilian composers as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Milton Nascimento, Celso Fonseca and Ivan Lins for the majority of the songs, which were ...

Celso Fonseca: Rive Gauche Rio

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 15, 2005

There's something especially unique about the way a Brazilian strums an acoustic guitar. Perhaps their rhythms play from a memory, instinctive not thought, inherited through generations of moonlight strolls on the beach, soft cool breezes caressing warm soft tanned skin, memories of romance and passion.

The heart of Celso Fonseca's second international release beats from his acoustic guitar and vocals--incredibly light, deceptively rhythmic, irresistibly romantic--supported by bassist Luiz Alvez and drummer Alexandre Foncesa (no relation). But he also ...

Celso Fonseca: Like Nice

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 8, 2017

Back in the late 1950s, when the bossa nova was first emerging in Rio de Janeiro, the music was all about a feathery touch. The acoustic guitar had to sound barely strummed, as if the breeze were whistling through the strings. The vocals had to sound almost whispered. Early masters such as João Gilberto, Johnny Alf, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá and others wrote songs meant to sound ethereal, like a lover's breathy secret. In the early 1960s, when producer ...
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