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Articles | Featured | Future

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Antonio Adolfo: Encontros - Orquestra Atlantica

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Big bands are a rarity in Brazilian jazz. Nonetheless pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo says he dreamed for 40 years of making an album with a world-class big band. His dream comes true with Encontroas--Orquestra Atlantica. While a relatively new and untried aggregate, on the evidence of this excellent, always interesting album, the Atlantica look set to become a major force at home and abroad. Under Adolfo's leadership, the band performs nine of his own songs plus the Miles ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Antonio Adolfo: Encontros - Orquestra Atlantica

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After forty years of gigging around the world with a who's who of jazz instrumentalists and singers, the celebrated Brazilian pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo has realized his life-long dream of writing for and recording with a world-class big band--and what a band it is: the remarkable Orquestra Atlantica from Adolfo's home country, formed in 2012 and molded since then into a superior ensemble fully capable of carrying out his every wish and desire. On Encontros, the Orquestra adeptly ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Antonio Adolfo: Hybrido - From Rio to Wayne Shorter

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Pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo has been a golden musical fixture in his native Brazil. He did not cross my radar until 2010 with his recording La e Ca: Here and There (AAM), which he recorded with jazz singer (and daughter) Carol Saboya. This revelation gave me two artists for the efforts of covering one. From that recording, followed Finas Misturas (Fine Mixtures) (AAM, 2013); Rio, Choro, Jazz (AAM, 2014); and Tropical Infinito (AAM, 2016) Adolfo is always happy to ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Antonio Adolfo: Hybrido - From Rio To Wayne Shorter

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With well over thirty albums to his name, Brazilian composer and pianist Antonio Adolfo has now conjured up a really attractive paean to the master saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. The selection of tracks is excellent because it clearly demonstrates just how key a figure Shorter is to jazz. It doesn't replicate the 1988 Blue Note collection The Best Of Wayne Shorter but does include three numbers from that album. “Deluge" offers a warm ensemble-led invocation of this ...

TAKE FIVE WITH...

Take Five With Antonio Adolfo

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About Antonio Adolfo Pianist, arranger, producer and educator Antonio Adolfo grew up in a musical family in jny: Rio de Janeiro and began his studies at the age of seven. At seventeen he was already a professional musician. His teachers include Deodato and Nadia Boulanger in jny: Paris. During the 60's he participated in several Bossa Nova and jazz shows in Brazil and toured with singers Leny Andrade, Flora Purim, Wilson Simonal, Elis Regina and Milton Nascimento, Adolfo ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Antonio Adolfo: Tropical Infinito

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Brazilian pianist/composer, arranger and longtime educator Antonio Adolfo, has more than twenty-five albums as a leader delivering the best of bossa nova and samba-styled grooves and employing a variety of rhythm sections in accomplishing this. Tropical Infinito is a musical homage of sorts from the pianist, exploring the jazz music of the early 1960s that influenced an entire generation of Brazilian bossa artists like himself. However, to accomplish this, Adolfo had to alter his rhythm-based approach to the music by ...

LIVE REVIEWS

Antonio Adolfo Graces Seattle's Brazilian Scene

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Antonio Adolfo & Hendrik Meurkens The Triple Door Seattle, Washington May 22, 2015 Brazilian pianist, composer, arranger and educator Antonio Adolfo made a rare West Coast appearance for a one- niter on May 22 at a storied downtown jny: Seattle, Washington venue, The Triple Door. The jny: Rio de Janeiro native, now based in Florida, brought harmonica ace Hendrik Meurkens from New York for the performance as part of a national tour to promote his ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Carol Saboya/Antonio Adolfo/Hendrik Meurkens: Copa Village

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Back in 1969, pianist Antonio Adolfo was working with vocalist Elis Regina. While touring through Sweden, Regina and her band had the opportunity to connect with Toots Thielemans, leading to the recording of Elis & Toots (Philips, 1969). Now, more than forty-five years later, Adolfo finds himself in a similar situation, working alongside another sunny Brazilian singer and European harmonica player--vocalist Carol Saboya, who happens to be his daughter, and vibraphonist/harmonica player Hendrik Meurkens. Copa Village finds ...

BAILEY'S BUNDLES

Jazz Quanta April

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April is no more the cruelest month than the moon is made of cheese. For consideration this month we have nine recordings from far and wide: Antonio Adolfo to Little Feat far and wide. Antonio Adolfo Rio, Choro, Jazz AAM Music 2014 Before there was Bossa Nova, there was Choro, which itself was a eutection of European, American and African musical elements. One of the greatest Choro composers was ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Antonio Adolfo: Rio, Choro, Jazz...

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For the more casual fans, Bossa Nova is the Brazilian contribution to music. But there's more than that, and a background from which the popularization of Brazilian sound began in America via saxophonist Stan Getz' teamings with Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim on Getz/Gilberto (Verve Records, 1963) and guitarist Charlie Byrd for Jazz Samba (Verve Records, 1962). Going deeper, and further back before the days of Bossa Nova, is pianist Antonio Adolfo on Rio, Choro, Jazz..., for ...