30 (Zoho Music)
Trio da Paz
Released February 2016
Grammy Nominee for Best Latin Jazz Album 2017
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m9PmXakQOUfZtusH8chgB8FqoNrvqiYQU
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/2pmeiM3qGaiXXQKRvTDV1s?si=mXK16SF4RDyi5t9neGeSkw
About:
Only very special collaborations last 30 years, and rarely do they become more exciting and together over the decades. Trio da Paz, however, is one such long-lasting and still lightning band. The team of drummer Eduardo “Duduka” Da Fonseca, guitarist Romero Lubambo and bassist Nilson Matta, all Brasilian jazzmen of New York City, is just as dashing today as when the three first met in 1985.
So 30, their seventh album and ZOHO debut release, wastes no time glancing back. Rather, Trio da Paz celebrates the past as a way to get to what’s now and what’s next. This is not to imply that the band or 30 denies history. As friends, Duduka, Romero and Nilson are utterly secure in their enduring triangle, and as musicians they tap well-established elements of bedrock Brasilian samba and bossa nova — the music of Jobim, Gilberto and Bonfá — as well as bebop and its developments, Wes Montgomery, third stream and even free improvisation for ingredients of their signature sound. Romero’s urban gypsy melodies and percussive chording, Nilson’s firm yet flexible baselines and Duduka’s rhythms — which, whether surging or simmering, are always energized — flow fast and inseparably over the course of 30.
Sampa 67 is characteristic: A brisk tune that welcomes the listener to enjoy the musicians’ empathic interplay. The composition is slangily named for São Paulo, where Nilson, its composer, was born, and his rubato statement is at the track’s center. Hear how Romero and Duduka, in stimulating exchanges, ramp the tempo back up to where it started.
In a similar mood and moving quickly, For Donato is Romero’s tribute to bandleader and pianist Joao Donato, a Brazilian master who absorbed Caribbean accents during his stints with Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader and Tito Puente, among others, when he lived in the United States during the late ’50s and ’60s. The tune uses an afoxé rhythm that comes from Bahia, and is closely related to an Afro-Cuban groove.
The pace slows somewhat – Duduka using brushes instead of sticks – for Romero’s bossa nova Outono (“Autumn”). Says the guitarist-composer: “With its changing of colors and cooler days after the summer, autumn is really a season for romantic music.” And this is really music for romance. Alana is Duduka’s piece for his older daughter, now an adult. Her father says Alana’s personality is reflected in the song, which changes meter from 15/8 to 6/8 to a doubletimed 4/4 for the bass solo to Duduka’s own episode in 15/8. So may we assume Alana is a sparkling and strong woman whose many dimensions fit together gracefully? Complementary yet contrasting, Luisa is for Romero’s daughter, currently 17. The guitarist calls her “a beautiful person inside and out, who I love very much!” Although written in ?, “Luisa” is not phrased as a jazz waltz but instead sways in a way that Duduka identifies as a waltz with a Brasilian lilt.
Brasilian guitar virtuoso Baden Powell (1937 – 2000), obviously a hero to Romero, Nilson and Duduka as an early exemplar of the pan-stylistic approach Trio da Samba favors, wrote Samba Triste which at a breakneck tempo doesn’t seem triste at all. Nilson’s Águas Brasileiras refers to the Atlantic ocean, which has exerted implacable influence on the Trio’s native land. A ballad, the song moves in soft waves; the trio’s improvisation opens up the theme’s depths and crosscurrents. Nilson recorded this previously, on his 2010 ZOHO album Copacabana.
Sweeping the Chimney, which Duduka calls “fast, really fast,” was inspired by workers attending to Romero’s house in New Jersey. “Luisa was three years old when I wrote that,” the guitarist mentions, “and she helped me decide some of the notes.” Duduka contributed Flying Over Rio, the melody of which came to him in an airplane taking off over Guanabara Bay, giving him a view of the mountains around Rio and Sugar Loaf, their peak. “Wow, it was gorgeous,” he remembers – also remembering to credit Paulo Jobim (Tom Jobim’s son) with suggesting to him one perfect note that launched the bridge “in a completely different direction.”
To conclude, Nilson’s LVM/Direto Ao Assunto (the initials of
his wife and sons/”to the point”) goes in a flash from subtle
reflection to searing line. Both of these songs have been recorded before by
Duduka and Nilson with pianist Helio Alves: “Flying over Rio” in 2008
on The Brazilian Trio’s ZOHO release “Forests”, and “LVM/Direto
ao Assunto” on that group’s album “Constelacao”. Nilson
introduced the song on the late pianist Don Pullen’s album Kele Mou Bana,
released in 1991.
That was just one year before Trio da Paz’s own recording debut, Brasil from
the Inside. Annotating that album, I wrote, “If North Americans hadn’t
invented jazz, surely Brasilians such as guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist
Nilson Matta and percussionist Duduka Da Fonseca would have.” In fact, the
members of Trio da Paz have invented jazz that’s personally and musically
unique. Their music is cool and hot, rooted in Brasilian heritage but
cosmopolitan, timely and timeless.
“After 30 years together, we still bring the same energy, emotion and
happiness whether we’re stepping onstage or into a recording session,”
says Nilson. “That’s the secret to Trio da Paz, what captivates our fans
and why we keep making new ones all over the world.” Romero agrees:
“To play as Trio da Paz is a unique experience because the music always
transcends notes, chords, tempos and anything written on sheet music.
Naturally, because we’ve been playing together for 30 years, we know each other
so well that we don’t need to explain anything. These are qualities that are
impossible to teach or articulate in words. They come from the hearts, souls
and feelings that we have as individuals and as a group.” Duduka adds
simply, “When we play, we’re very organic and spontaneous. Even to songs
we perform often, we like to take a fresh approach. Sometimes one of us does
something a little different, and we all realize it’s better, so we stick with
that. It’s like a democracy. We all have ideas and try to do our best.”
The best of Trio da Paz is very fine. And though journalists used to use
“-30-” to indicate the end of a story, 30 whets the appetite for more
from a band in its prime.
Howard Mandel
Track Listing:
1. Sampa 67 (Nilson Matta) 5:15
2. For Donato (Romero Lubambo) 5:45
3. Outono (Romero Lubambo) 4:18
4. Alana (Duduka Da Fonseca) 5:01
5. Luisa (Romero Lubambo) 3:33
6. Samba Triste (Baden Powell) 4:05
7. Águas Brasileiras (Nilson Matta) 4:47
8. Sweeping the Chimney (Romero Lubambo) 4:05
9. Flying Over Rio (Duduka Da Fonseca) 3:30
10. Lvm/Direto Ao Assunto (Nilson Matta) 5:24
Personnel:
Romero Lubambo: acoustic & electric guitars
Nilson Matta: acoustic bass
Duduka Da Fonseca: drums
Recorded October 27, 2011, by Kyle Cassel, at Kaleidoscope Sound, New Jersey (tracks 4 – 8) and November 13 & 14, 2014, by Michael Brorby, at Acoustic Recording, Brooklyn, NY (tracks 1, 2, 3, 9, 10)
Mixed by Brian Montgomery in Astoria, New York
Mastered by Katsuhiko Naito at Avatar Studios, New York, NY
Produced by Trio Da Paz
Review:
This is the quintessential Brasilian trio, a power trio if ever there was one, featuring Romero Lubambo, Nilson Matta and Duduka Da Fonseca. The guitarist, bassist and drummer can lay claim to being Brasil’s finest exports to the US. As a trio they have overwhelmed the hearts and minds of audiences all over the States and, if they travelled far and wide, the world as well. In their individual capacities each musician has built a career for himself that is the envy of many of their contemporaries. Together they are a formidable force, playing with energy, imagination and almost telepathic integrity. But 30 is their first release on the iconic label ZOHO Music in three decades.
Over these 30 years Trio Da Paz completed several albums whose differences encapsulate the formidable extension of their music over time. The ten works on this disc written against a background of Brasilian samba and bossa nova are formidable in their technical and expressive assurance. They explode the cultural complacencies endemic in contemporary Brasilian music and all of the repertoire glows with commitment, befitting as it does, the excellence and towering interpretation of what is typical of the idioms. Key passages in Baden Powell’s Samba Triste, for instance, feature superlative performances not only by Lubambo, for whose instrument the piece is best suited, but also for Matta and Da Fonseca, who join in the dancing festivities that Powell imbued the song with.
None of the musicians jostle for attention in any of the pieces on this recording. They play as if they are one nervous system sending precise messages to the brain and from there to hands and fingers to play music with admirably lucid and painstakingly beautiful and magisterial pomp and circumstance. And yet the profound beauty moves with emotional candour that is intrepid and quarries in the music’s hugely powerful attraction. All of the music – except Samba Triste – is original work largely written by Lubambo, with significant contributions by Matta and Da Fonseca. It might seem, therefore, that this is a guitar record, at first blush, but on deeper listening it becomes clear that the bassist and drummer also bask in the great lustre and ambient warmth in what is a judiciously balanced sound picture.
It really doesn’t get any better than this as far as these Brasilian musicians go, or does it? This is a standout performance by three iconic instrumentalists and no fan of either of them should miss hearing this record. The momentum and ebullience with which this music is imbued will forever remain in the memory of all discerning musicians and listeners alike.
Raul Da Gama (Latin Jazz Network)
