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Antonio Adolfo
Antonio Adolfo is a Brazilian born pianist, composer and arranger
About Me
Antonio Adolfo grew up in a musical family in Rio de Janeiro (his
mother was a violinist in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra), and
began his studies at the age of seven. At seventeen he was already
a professional musician. His teachers include Eumir Deodato and
the great Nadia Boulanger in Paris. During the 60's he led his own
trio and toured with singers Elis Regina and Milton Nascimento.
Adolfo wrote tunes that gained great success and have been
recorded by such artists as Sérgio Mendes, Stevie Wonder, Herb
Alpert, Earl Klugh, Dionne Warwick, and others. He won
International Song Contests on two occasions. As a musician and
arranger he has worked with some of the most representative
Brazilian names, besides having released more than 25 albums
under his name. In 1985 Mr. Adolfo created his own school in Rio,
Brazil. His 2010 CD album, Lá e Cá/Here and There, follows the
footsteps of 2007 live recording Antonio Adolfo e Carol Saboya
Ao Vivo/ Live. In 2011 his CD Chora Baiao was released and became
awarded. Antonio Adolfo is currently releasing Finas Misturas/Fine Mixtures.
A N T O N I O A D O L F O
& C A R O L S A B O Y A
Biography
From Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, and Herb Alpert to Elis
Regina, Beth Carvalho, and Sergio Mendes, some of the world’s
most popular and influential artists have recorded the songs of
Antonio Adolfo. But on his gorgeous new album Lá e Cá (Here and
There), the prolific Brazilian pianist, composer, and arranger once
again shifts his focus from his own work to interpreting classic jazz
tunes and American Songbook gems. In a follow-up to 2007’s
award-winning collaboration with his vocalist daughter, Antonio
Adolfo and Carol Saboya Ao Vivo, a seductive set of Brazilian
standards, Adolfo undertakes a highly personal journey through a
realm where the ravishing harmonies of Bill Evans co-mingle with
the supple pulse of bossa nova.
“I fell in love with jazz as a teenager, and there were many great
musicians in Rio who were also delving into jazz,” says Adolfo, 63.
“At the same time, bossa nova was spreading around the world.
The Carnegie Hall concert with João Gilberto, Luiz Bonfá, and
Sergio Mendes came up in 1962. So I was swept up in both styles,
and that remains my interest today.”
Numerous jazz musicians have made albums expressing their
passion for Brazilian music. In many ways, Lá e Cá is the memoir of
a Brazilian musician’s love affair with jazz. Now based in Hollywood,
Florida, where he runs the U.S. outpost of the Rio music school he
launched 25 years ago, Adolfo recorded the album last December
while on a trip back home. Each American standard Adolfo
interprets reveals the deep emotional and musical currents that
inextricably link North America’s largest nation to South America’s
continental powerhouse.
Adolfo and Saboya transform Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You
Are” with sensuous Brazilian phrasing, while his solo highlights the
way countless composers have borrowed the song’s chord changes
by referencing Dori Caymmi’s “Amazon River.” His version of “Time
After Time” is a loving homage to Chet Baker, whose classic 1954
Pacific Jazz recording of the song inspired bossa nova’s emerging
pioneers. Adolfo weaves George Shearing’s anthem “Lullaby of
Birdland” together with Jobim’s “Garoto,” infusing both tunes with
the propulsive feel of choro. And on “So in Love,” Saboya’s soft,
luminous vocals and caressing phrasing draw an implicit parallel
between Cole Porter and Jobim.
“I’ve loved jazz since I was young, and I thought that Ella was one
of the most interesting singers I heard,” says Saboya, who was born
in Rio de Janeiro on March 10, 1975. “Female jazz singers are
always a reference for me, but I never sang any American
standards. I thought everyone does that. Then my dad came with
the idea to bring them together with Brazilian music in this way. I
sang the way I like to sing, but with his beautiful phrasing.”
One reason that Adolfo’s bossa jazz vision is rendered so vividly
and effectively is the superlative cast of accompanists, including
Uruguayan-born guitarist Leo Amuedo (a frequent collaborator with
Ivan Lins), bassist Jorge Helder (often heard with Chico Buarque
and Maria Bethânia), drummer Rafael Barata (whose credits
include Edu Lobo, Rosa Passos, and Monica Salmaso) and the
aptly named trombonist Serginho Trombone. Fortunately, Adolfo
doesn’t completely neglect his own material. He opens the album
with his sinuous, oft-interpreted tune “Cascavel,” and closes with a
medley including a remarkably mature piece written by the teenage
Adolfo in the early 1960s, “Toada Jazz (O Retirante),” which segues
gracefully into Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” In between, Adolfo
introduces a recent work, “Minor Chord,” a buoyantly swinging tune
that finds a surprising seam of bliss within its minor key.
“I’m always writing,” he says. “These days I’m writing more
instrumental tunes than songs. I love the combination of writing,
arranging, playing, and teaching.”
Music was omnipresent in the Adolfo household when he was
growing up. His mother played first violin in the orchestra of the
Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, and Adolfo started studying the
instrument at seven. Intrigued by the piano’s harmonic possibilities,
he began investigating it on his own at 14. It was the early 1960s,
and Rio was vibrating to the pulse created by João Gilberto. The
underage pianist honed his chops by wangling his way into
Copacabana jam sessions and by 17 was working professionally
with Samba Cinco, a mainstay in Rio’s bossa nova showcase Beco
das Garrafas.
In 1964, Carlos Lyra and Vinicius de Moraes recruited Adolfo for
their play Pobre Menina Rica, which put him at the center of the
burgeoning MPB scene with his trio 3-D. The group gained
widespread attention accompanying the great jazz singer Leny
Andrade, and toured with budding superstar Milton Nascimento in
1967, right after his triumph at the First International Pop Song
Festival in Rio. “He was a very shy guy,” Adolfo recalls. “He always
had that wonderful voice.”
Like Nascimento, whose songs were first performed by the late Elis
Regina, Adolfo was one of the brilliant young musicians
championed by the legendary Brazilian jazz singer. He toured with
Regina for about two years in a group with guitarist Roberto
Menescal, often performing in Europe (where he took the
opportunity to study with the great Nadia Boulanger in Paris). He
appears on Regina’s classic collaboration with harmonica virtuoso
Toots Thielemans, Aquarela do Brasil, and Elis Regina in London,
where she recorded Adolfo’s song “Giro.”
“She was sort of like Miles Davis, always looking for new musicians
who could bring her something,” Adolfo says. “She discovered
Milton and Edu Lobo and recorded many new composers and
made them famous. She was always in the vanguard, trying to find
new material. She had a sense of rhythm that I’ve seen very rarely.
She could totally float with the band, and that’s why she liked to play
with jazz-oriented musicians. She was a great artist.”
By the late 1960s, Adolfo was an esteemed songwriter and
bandleader. Working with lyricist Tibério Gaspar, he went on to
create Antonio Adolfo & Brazuca, a groovy futuristic pop band with
female vocalists that expanded the catchier side of Tropicalia.
Regina covered their song “Sá Marina,” which found a new
audience as “Pretty World” through recordings by Stevie Wonder
and Sergio Mendes with an English lyric by Alan and Marilyn
Bergman. As Brazil’s televised song contest era was winding down,
he won second place in 1969 with “Juliana” and first place the
following year with “BR3.”
Sought after as an arranger, Adolfo worked with many of Brazil’s
leading recording artists. But he may have made a bigger impact as
a producer and entrepreneur who created the independent label
Artezanal in 1977. Whether releasing albums focusing on his
original compositions, like Feito em Casa and Encontro Musical with
Joyce and Erasmo Carlos, or supervising projects highlighting
overlooked artists like Belle Époque choro pioneer Ernesto
Nazareth, seminal female pianist/composer Chiquinha Gonzaga,
and guitarist/composer João Pernambuco, Adolfo assembled
exceptional casts for first-rate productions.
By the late 1970s, Adolfo was exploring jazz/funk and writing for
Brazilian film and television. His interest in musical education also
took root, eventually leading to the creation in 1985 of Centro
Musical Antonio Adolfo, which grew into Rio’s leading music school,
with an international student body of more than 1000. He has
served as the IAJE’s (International Association for Jazz Education)
Latin American Section Coordinator for eight years. Over the years
he’s taught around the world, including numerous stints in the U.S.
He spent two years in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, teaching and
performing at leading jazz clubs.
Carol Saboya, the elder of Adolfo’s two musical daughters, made
her first recording at eight, but began her professional career as an
adult on Sergio Mendes’s Grammy-winning album Brasileiro,
recorded during the family’s Southern California sojourn. When the
family moved back to Rio, she continued to study and refine her
craft, releasing an impressive debut album in 1997, Dança da Voz,
which won Brazil’s coveted Sharp Prêmio award for Best New Pop
(MPB) Singer.
While Saboya spends much of her time teaching at Centro Musical
Antonio Adolfo, she has continued to release acclaimed albums,
including a 1999 session with guitarist Nelson Faria, Janelas
Abertas, exploring the music of Jobim. Her most frequent
collaborator over the years has been Adolfo, a creatively charged
relationship that’s complicated and sustained by their blood ties.
“I love performing with her,” Adolfo says. “Carol’s very jazz-oriented.
She’s the type of singer musicians like to play with. She has that
sense of rhythm. In the beginning I wanted her to be a singer, and
maybe put some pressure on her, so I have to take care.”
With Lá e Cá, Adolfo and Saboya attain a new musical
understanding, a singular melding of the best of Brazil and the
United States. •
Antonio Adolfo & Carol Saboya: Lá e Cá (Here and There)
(AAM Music)
Street Date: April 20, 2010
Media Contact:
Terri Hinte
[email protected]
510-234-8781