Eliane Elias
Released March 15, 2015
Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album 2016
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Em36MQ0FUgs&list=OLAK5uy_m5wRJ1P1eEC7IF7Fv1PHuqO-0lJozSC9I
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6o2BjeL9WtgAt3NhRk26Xp?si=tP7XeAkkQ8yXRUyjFFcipQ
About:
Eliane Elias is known for her distinctive and immediately recognizable musical style which blends her Brazilian roots and sensuous, alluring voice with her virtuosic instrumental jazz, classical and compositional skills. Made in Brazil marks a musical homecoming for Elias. In her three-decade long career as a solo artist, it results from the first time she’s recorded a disc in her native Brazil since moving to the United States in 1981.
Elias wears many hats on this project as producer, composer, lyricist, arranger, pianist and vocalist. Along with co-producers, Steve Rodby and Marc Johnson, her bass playing musical partner, Elias ventured ‘home’ and recruited a splendid cast of Brazilian musicians that include electric bassist Marcelo Mariano; guitarists Marcus Teixeira and Roberto Menescal; drummers Edu Ribeiro and Rafael Barata; and percussionists Mauro Refosco and Marivaldo dos Santos.
Elias peppered the sessions with delightful special guest performances from Mark Kibble and the multi-GRAMMY® Award winning Gospel vocal group Take 6, her singer/songwriter-daughter Amanda Brecker, one of Brazil’s most celebrated R&B stars, Ed Motta, and renowned bossa nova composer Roberto Menescal. Elias also invited Rob Mathes to handle orchestral arrangements on seven of the 12 tracks, which were recorded in London at the legendary Abbey Road studios.
Made in Brazil contains six Elias originals plus two Ary Barroso standards, two Roberto Menescal chestnuts, and two Antônio Carlos Jobim world-renowned gems. Elias, who did all the arrangements for the basic tracks, said that she purposely wanted Made in Brazil to incorporate three generations of Brazilian composers. Brazil is a part of Elias’ DNA and musically she demonstrates the tradition of where she comes from, as well as where she is today.
Eliane Elias on Returning to Her Home Country for ‘Made in Brazil,’ Being Blond & Female in Jazz
Eliane Elias arrived in New York as a jazz prodigy ready to take on the world she knew from listening to records in her native Sao Paulo. And she did. The first female instrumentalist to make the cover of Downbeat magazine, and a five-time Grammy nominee, Elias was signed to Blue Note Records early in her career and now records on Concord. Her last album, 2013’s Chet Baker tribute I Thought About You, went to no. 4 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart.
While Elias has also been known for her recordings of Brazilian music, Made in Brazil, which comes out Tuesday (March 31), is the first album that she produced in Brazil since moving to the United States three decades ago. Sensual and breezy, the set — which includes classics “Waters of March” and “Aquarela do Brasil,” as well as six of her own compositions – transmits Elias’ delight at recording in her homeland with local musicians.
Elias starts a U.S. tour the day the album releases at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. She’ll swing through Chicago and Boston in April before playing New York’s Birdland, performing with Sergio Mendes in Orlando, and heading to California.
Billboard spoke to the pianist on her homegrown new album, finding the right piano in Brazil, and being a blond Brazilian woman amongst the American male jazz elite.
Throughout your career your music has been informed by your Brazilian heritage; you´ve recorded Brazilian music as well as straight-ahead jazz. This is the first album you´ve recorded in Brazil in a very long time. Why now, and why not before?
I haven´t made an album in Brazil since I moved to New York in 1981. I was playing jazz, and then with the years I started bringing more Brazilian music into the recordings. I had musicians I worked with here like [the great bossa nova guitarist] Oscar Castro-Neves. After Oscar passed away [in 2013], I was on a trip to Brazil, and I said it would be really great to do an album here in my hometown, in Sao Paulo. I wrote all the material there. The title Made in Brazil comes from myself being a pure Brazilian, of course, but everything was conceived there, the music was written there, the arrangements were written there by me. The basic tracks all were recorded there, and then it branched out. We went to London to put strings. It was really fantastic a great experience a great vibe, and of course, sharing the music of Brazil with the Brazilians, the people who feel this music the way it really is and live this music.
How did recording in Brazil feel different?
It was the vibe. Even going to the rehearsal, driving through Sao Paulo, the climate there. It was summer, everyone’s wearing shorts, we get together, we go out, we have pizza or other things to eat. And fun, you know, it was fun. It’s very warm, and not only the weather, the people there.
And then the music. It’s their language. Like when they heard “Waters of March,” which is a tune that a lot of people know. It’s the most covered tune, even more than “The Girl From Ipanema.” They know intimately what that tune is, what that music is, so they can really hear it. It was that enthusiasm, that feeling of being together. All of the players could really play the way I envisioned the tunes to be played.
When you left Brazil, what were you looking for?
Since I was a kid I was in love with jazz. I had always played the music, played jazz, been an improviser. I had the sound in my mind, and the musicians that I heard playing that were the musicians that I sought when I moved to New York, the people that influenced me and the history of jazz.
Of course I’m Brazilian. I worked with Jobim, many of the greats, which was fantastic to play Brazilian music with the creators of that language. But I wanted to play jazz.
When I arrived it was something quite different — a woman coming from South America, a white, blond Brazilian woman coming in. And I was accepted immediately, embraced, and I felt the super responsibility of giving continuity to that language that I had admired and studied and specialized in. So I recorded many jazz records and then I started bringing the Brazilian side in. Brazilian music never left me.
A lot of Brazilian artists focus their careers on Brazil, since it is a large country with an audience to sustain them without going abroad.
I moved here to New York when I was 21 years old. I’m now in my 50s, so my career has been an international career. Brazil is very special, but it’s treated like all the other countries I perform in.
And you’d be surprised, but there are not so many venues in Brazil that are appropriate for piano. Brazil is a country of guitar. You’d be surprised how you can’t find a good piano, so you can’t go so many places on tour because you wouldn’t find the right instrument to perform. You have to go to the major cities.
What have been some of the challenges of being a woman in the jazz field?
I have been a pioneer. It’s hard for women in general. The demands of being on the road all the time really, really get in the way of family and having relationships, having children. It’s very difficult.
Many times I would have to get on the plane to take my daughter [Amanda Brecker, who now sings professionally and performs on Made in Brazil] to Brazil to my mother’s. Then I would come back and go on a tour and then go back and get her. I had to have private tutors, private help. But she was always either with me or with the wonderful help of my mother. I didn’t really start taking this amount of touring until she went to college. I played 220 dates last year.
Your career began when you were very young. How did it happen?
I come from a musical family. My mother loved music; she played classical piano and loved jazz. And we had a piano in the house. Not many homes had a piano in the house, but we had a piano. When I was seven years old, I started taking piano lessons and it became very quickly apparent that the ability I had for the instrument was incredible. The way of producing sound was something different, and I also could write music, I could transcribe music. I would go to the teacher and I would start playing things, and the teacher would have tears rolling down her face. And I would say mom, I don’t want to go anymore because the teacher was crying all the time. As a child I already had a facility for playing, and I had another facility; I hear every note, I can transcribe anything. I can write any rhythm, any time. So I would put my record player — I had jazz records — I would put on Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, and I would write down every note they played and play along with the record. So at the age of ten I was a child prodigy already. I was already writing music at that age.
Judy Cantor-Navas (Billboard)
Track Listing:
1. Brasil (Aquarela do Brasil) (Ary Barroso) 4:40
2. Você (Ronaldo Bôscoli / Ray Gilbert / Roberto Menescal) 5:19
3. Águas de Março [Waters of March] (Antônio Carlos Jobim) 5:52
4. Searching (Eliane Elias) 4:52
5. Some Enchanted Place (Eliane Elias / Marco Johnson) 5:02
6. Incendiando (Eliane Elias / Marco Johnson) 4:50
7. Vida (If Not You) (Eliane Elias) 4:41
8. Este Seu Olhar/Promessas (Antônio Carlos Jobim) 3:29
9. Driving Ambition (Eliane Elias / Marco Johnson) 5:29
10. Rio (Ronaldo Bôscoli / Roberto Menescal) 4:50
11. A Sorte do Amor [The Luck of Love] (Eliane Elias) 3:47
12. No Tabuleiro da Baiana (Ary Barroso) 4:48
Personnel:
Eliane Elias: vocals, piano, keyboards
Marcus Teixeira: guitar (1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12)
Marcelo Mariano: electric bass (1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12)
Marc Johnson: acoustic bass (2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11)
Edu Riberio: drums (1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12)
Rafael Barata: drums (2, 4, 5, 10)
Mauro Refosco: percussion (1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
Marivaldo dos Santos: percussion (5, 9)
Special guests
Take 6: vocals (3)
Mark Kibble: vocals (3, 6, 9)
Ed Motta: vocals (7)
Amanda Brecker: vocals (4)
Roberto Menescal: vocals (2), guitar (2, 10)
Recorded in 2014, at NeCena, Sao Paulo, Brasil; additional recording at Samurai Hotel Studios, NY; orchestra recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, UK
Produced by Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson and Steve Rodby
Orchestra arranged and conducted by Rob Mathes
Review:
If you’ve never been to Brazil, consider Eliane Elias as a goodwill ambassador with Made In Brazil. It is a triumphant return for the pianist/vocalist to her native land to record her first album there since relocating to the United States in 1981.
There is a delicacy to how Elias chooses and approaches the material. There is no genuflecting to pop music as there was on Light My Fire(Concord, 2011). Here Elias is all about adult emotions and days of “wine and roses” gorgeously captured on her original, “Searching.” Elias called upon Rob Mathes to handle orchestral arrangements on seven of the 12 tracks which were recorded in London at the legendary Abbey Road Studios. Never overbearing or overblown, Mathes utilizes the strings to enhance the dreamily romantic atmosphere of Made In Brazil.
You might think by now Elias would have covered the Antonio Carlos Jobim classic “Aguas de Marco (Waters of March).” After all she dedicated a tribute to her countryman, Eliane Elias Sings Jobim (Blue Note, 1988), but somehow she bypassed “Waters of March.” That oversight is remedied by inviting the vocal group Take 6 to join in with some R&B sweetness as Elias deftly provides a sparkling solo on the Fender Rhodes. When a musician is wearing as many hats as Elias is here as a producer, composer, lyricist, arranger, musician and vocalist there is an inherent risk of coming up short somewhere, but there are no notable lapses. Whether Elias is dueting with daughter Amanda Brecker on “Some Enchanted Evening” with band mate and husband Marc Johnson on acoustic bass or joined by composer Roberto Menescal who adds his vocals to “Você” and guitar on “Rio,” the results are nothing short of blissful perfection.
Switching gracefully between English and Portuguese, Made In Brazil is a sensual, sexy, swaying journey through Elias’ native heart. Beyond any doubt it proves you can go home again.
Elias has firmly established herself as an consummate talent whether she is behind the keyboard or in front of the microphone. The artist presented in these twelve tracks is an assured and polished professional who brings a subtle delicacy to this music. Made In Brazil is another glittering gem in Elias’ crown as the luminary leader of contemporary bossa nova, samba and Brazilian jazz.
Jeff Winbush (All About Jazz)
