Felipe Senna & Câmaranóva: Overture

Felipe Senna's expansive oeuvre defies genre, encompassing popular, classical, jazz, folkloric, abstract and narrative elements. Music, as he put it, "needs no excuses to thrill and move us...that's why I believe genre and style are not an end—they're just tools with which we take music to wherever we want it to go."

Overture is the second release by the composer and pianist's Câmaranóva, a superb chamber orchestra that aims to expand the repertoire and audience for music of living Brazilian composers. Information on Câmaranóva's extraordinary self-titled debut is here. The core group is comprised of noted symphonic and popular music players, including celebrated artists in the popular realm, such as flutist-pianist-composer Lea Freire and flutist Gabriela Machado, with guest spots from other distinguished musicians associated with choro and Brazilian jazz.

Senna wrote and orchestrated all of the compositions on the album's program, which flows like a script with a definite beginning, middle and end. It opens in a quasi-classical manner with an "Overture" containing all of the main themes in the pieces to follow, juxtaposed and re-orchestrated. "Danzas No. 2," next up, is Senna's contemporary Brazilianized response to a European baroque triple concerto for violin (Eder Grangeiro), cello (Rafael Cesário) and piano (Senna) in three continuous movements. "Lendas" takes another turn. A four-part suite reminiscent of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (1936), it has instruments portraying characters from indigenous Amazonian folklore. Diogo Maia's clarinet is Saci, a mischievous one-legged boy who hides things, steals food and lets animals loose. Marcel Baciunas's xylophone is Curupira, protector of forest creatures, whose feet are on backwards. Machado's flute plays Vitória-Régia, a girl who falls in love with the moon, chasing its reflection only to drown in the water, transmogrifying into a giant night-blooming lily. A fourth tale is of European colonial origin: the story of a headless mule—played by Bruno Soares' trumpet—that spews fire and curses sinful women (Douglas Braga's soprano sax plays the woman).

The orchestra's improvisers take hold two-thirds of the way through the program. Freire and Israel Bueno de Almeida shine in "Valse Chorona," creating, as Senna put it, "a dialogue between the atmosphere of regional choro and chamber music" on an AABA form. Freire plays the theme and improvises on flute, while Almeida fleshes out the chords of a lead-sheet, creating bass lines and counterpoint on his seven-string guitar. Senna describes "O Bailado" as an "event" with many guest artists (YouTube, bottom of this page). The rhythm section, led by Edu Ribeiro at the drums, features Thiago Espírito Santo on electric bass, Fabio Sá on double bass, Vinicius Barros and Ricardo Valverde on percussion and Senna at the piano and Fender Rhodes. Espirito Santo and saxophonist Nailor Proveta contribute beautifully integrated improvised solos. "These two tracks have the greatest connection with Brazilian jazz," Senna explains, "but the language of our música instrumental brasileira [Brazilian jazz] is present in all the works on the album...it is precisely the bridge between the various current languages of the Brazilian imagination and the so-called 'concert' music, played by a chamber orchestra, that I propose to create in this work."