Os meus queridos~ I have been in Rio just over a week and much has occurred. Lots of music, lots of walking, lots of pictures, lots of fun & crazy things. Tonight is quiet, rainy, cool. But yesterday— the first day of winter here—was sunny and hot, over 90 for sure. There seems to be a 4-day cycle going on—and this is the 2nd since I arrived—of warm, hot, hotter, rain & cool, and then it starts over again. The Cariocas complain bitterly about how cold it gets at night and go around in heavy sweaters whenever it gets down to maybe 75, but meanwhile I’m living in a room with huge windows that don’t close all the way & there’s no glass at all in the window in the shower stall, so they can’t be planning on anything approaching my usual version of winter.
I arrived last Friday—the 13th—and Romulo met me at the airport. We dropped my bags at Miriam’s, chatted a bit with her, and went off for lunch at the Garota da Urca. I was feeling a bit frazzled—I think I cut it too close this time between wrapping things up at home and taking off for here—but it was good to be back all the same. Saturday was choro school. I forgot to set my watch to Rio time, so realized I was running an hour late too late to be on time for the 9:00 roda, but watched the end of it & then had interesting classes w/ Pedro Amorim. In Bandolim2 the assignment had been to memorize Carinhoso & figure out a counter-line for Naquele Tempo. I know Carinhoso pretty well since I just played it at Brinsley’s wedding, and improvised a counterline on the spot for NT that worked pretty well. Pedro also taught us Diabinho Maluco by ear. It wasn’t so hard to catch on because I have played the tune and it’ll be good to learn it by ear for next week.
Bandolim3 was just Jesse and Andre and a violinist and two of us who stayed from Bandolim2. Pedro taught us a beautiful waltz by Luperce Mranda by ear. Well, tried to. J&A mostly got it, but the rest of us were lost in the maze of arpeggios. I recorded it though & the assignment was to have the first section down by next week. Bandão was fun and I got to sit next to Marcilio, as usual. He’s playing in a Kurt Weil opera, and rehearsing for the Elizeth Cardosa musical that’s opening in Rio at the end of the month, and his group is just finishing up their CD of Joel’s music, with Joel himself recording the final track on Tuesday. He invited me to come to the session in Santa Teresa, which should be fun. & he promised that I could come over to Niteroi to work on chords with him after the musical is up & running & he has a bit more time.
After Bandão, Luiz, a guitar friend from many rodas, asked if I wanted to go over to Bar Urca for lunch, as has become a habit of many, so I got to hang out in the sun at the counter eating a mug of their delicious fish soup and speaking a quite amazing amount of Portuguese with some fellow students. He dropped me back at school where I chatted w/ Samantha & Marcia & then got dropped off at home by Romulo who had brought the bag of stuff I left at his place last time. I bought a phone card, called Joel to set up a lesson, bought some groceries and a Veja Rio magazine to check out the coming musical shows, and began to feel more settled.
In the evening I met R & Mariana downtown at the Teatro Municipal to hear a concert of the national symphony (not Henrique’s, another one) featuring the music of Piazzolla w/ a bandoneon soloist who was amazing. I left them at the Botofogo metro station & took the bus home on what turned out to be a hair-raising ride. The driver didn’t feel like waiting in a traffic jam so he went over to the other side of a divided street and drove against traffic while everyone in the bus yelled at him until he finally went back to the right side. It turned out that the traffic jam was caused by a car that had parked half on the sidewalk—as they all do—unfortunately making the street too narrow for busses to get through & one was stuck & everyone was out in the street pushing the car & directing traffic & the drivers were jockeying for position & our bus driver was trying to skitch out a car to turn onto the street that he wouldn’t now fit down anyway. Ai-yi-yi! It was good to get home & luckily I haven’t seen that bus driver since.
Sunday morning was the São Sebastian roda that I love so because it has become a community. We play, drink beer, sometimes capirinhas, talk. Romulo came this week, and Cassio was there with his clarinet, and Luiz, and the harmonica guy from the US, and Norma who plays accordion, and Ishmael, the blind drummer, and his aunt, and the man from the neighborhood who comes to listen & always chats w/ me, and the friend of Jorge’s who plays pandeiro, and of course Ana, who started the whole thing, and her always-beaming husband. I had my new little battery-powered amp & clip-on mic which did make my bandolim somewhat louder but, as with most amplification, it wasn’t as good as hoped for. In my next life I’m coming back as a sax player!
Mariana arrives at the end and we go w/ R & Cassio to have lunch in the very crowded & cheerful neighborhood botequim & afterwards they drop me back in Urca. About an hour later I get a call from TaxiPaulo & he & Marcelo come over to pick up the mic I brought down for M., who turns out to be a nice jolly guy. I ask them about mastering for the Agua no Feijão CD, as we are rapidly approaching this stage, & they have a friend who could do it @ Marcelo’s studio, so I’ll get Romulo & Pablo to check it out. TP has brought me a tiny doll of a Japanese lady playing whatever their instrument is that looks like a long-neck mandolin. He seems v.happy, having apparently broken up w/ his stressful girlfriend. Watching my friends go in & out of relationships here makes me glad to be sozinho at this point in my life. It’s so much easier to just live, work, and play music!
Monday always seems to be a rest day after a hectic music week-end. I walk to the Rio Sul Shopping to try to buy a port-ingles dictionary, having forgotten mine. There’s not a good one, but I buy a Brazilian portugues teach-yourself book to review & read some of it in the afternoon. It’s quite good, but I think would be daunting if I didn’t already know alot. I find out, for instance, that “mas” is but and “mais” is more—I’ve been mixing them up in emails forever! I practice some music, have a nice dinner w/ Miriam at home, and Marcilio calls to say the recording session w/ Joel is tomorrow @ 16:00 & he will email me the address. Paulo Sa also calls & we’ll meet Thursday @ the Villa Lobos school. & he tells me that we—he and I—are playing a concert at the Conservatorio Brasileiro on July 2nd! But what will we play? We’ll both bring music on Thursday and decide then.
Tuesday I have a surprising amount of online business to attend to, about my concert series @ RWU & Perishable Theatre and other gigs, emails with questions seeking answers, CD orders… It seems funny & v.modern to be able to deal w/ all this from Rio. I take a lunch break @ the Garota da Urca & leave @ 3ish for the recording session in Sta. Teresa. But I get off my bus too soon & walk around in unfamiliar territory before giving in and hailing a cab.
Joel is at the studio when I arrive & Marcilio & Jayme & Rui & the rest of the band (Agua de Moringue) arrive progressively later. This is the last track to be recorded and then the CD will be complete. It’s all music written by Joel & arranged by various members of the band. Today’s piece was written for Joel’s brother & arranged by Marcilio, who decided that Joel should record the bandolim part instead of him. After that happens we listen to the finished tracks, and this CD is absolutely incredible! I have the feeling that I am hearing something important and original. Joel continually asks what I think, and the rest of the band seem pleased that I like it so much.
I take a picture of them all in the studio, remembering all the famous pictures of famous Brazilian musicians I have seen in books and wondering if someday this will be one of those. It’s attached here. Afterwards we all go out to a bar where they know the woman owner & she sits w/ us & we drink copious amounts of beer & eat delicious snacks & Joel is v.happy & funny. It’s nice to hang out w/ him in an environment other than lessons at his house.
When I get home there’s a phone message (my phone was off in the studio) & an email from Miriam asking me to translate some text for her daughter Cecelia’s movie on Messias that will debut a week from Friday. Messias is an old wise artist who plays viola capira—a small open-tuning guitar that sounds somewhat like a harp—and sings and paints & drinks too much cachaca. I heard him play at a house party in 2005 & love his
music, so it will be fun to see the movie.
Wednesday morning there is an urgent call & email from Cecelia to look over some other English translation, so I do & make some small corrections. Wednesday afternoon is my lesson w/ Joel & I ride there & back w/TaxiPaulo—always events I look forward to. TP tells me that Romulo has spoken w/ Marcelo & Marcelo has arranged for a friend to master our CD @ M’s studio for a v.good price (R tells me later that M. is v.grateful the I brought the mic over for him, and is pretty much doing this as a favor.) Apparently we’re all meeting @ M’s studio tomorrow to check it out.
My lesson is good, and I know enough chords now that Joel & I can just play some choro too—switching melody and accompaniment. Boy, is that is thrill! Joel experiments w/ putting up temporary sound posts in my bandolim to see if that improves the sound, and I get to play both his new and old bandolins. And for the last hour of my weekly 5-hour “lesson” we listen to the mixes of his new waltz CD w/ piano for Biscoito Fino. He’s unhappy w/ the mix on a couple of tunes & plays me the unmixed versions as well & I agree—they’ve added too much compression and it interferes w/ Joel’s dramatic musical gestures making the end result less musical. & then TP arrives & of course he has to hear both versions & discuss everything & ultimately agree.
There is so much discussion in my life in Rio, so many opinions considered, so many ideas tossed back and forth—almost always in portugues. Brazilians like to discuss things and weigh options in a way that doesn’t happen so much in my life in the US. They like ideas, like to duel with them, & even sell philosophy books at magazine stands right next to the soap opera digest!
Later Wednesday night, after arriving home, I check through my computer & method-book duets to find possibilities for my duo concert w/ PauloSa the week after next. & Thursday I meet him downtown & we go for lunch in a lovely restaurant (rather than grabbing a bite at a stand-up lunch stand as we usually do) & talk about our book project & concert. Between us we have music for a good program of original mandolin duets for the concert—amazing! That will be good because it’s @ a music conservatory & for students, so I’m less inclined to play arrangements of Bach and violin duets. I’d rather showcase the mandolin’s own repertoire. I take home some of P’s pieces to copy, and we will practice next week. I have unfortunately forgotten to bring the template we decided on for the choro book, but we agree on a place to start & so will do that.
I have just arrived home from our meeting when Romulo calls & is in Laranjeiras meeting Pablo, and do I want to meet them there to go to Marcelo’s studio? So I am back on public transit, this time @ rush hour, but manage to make it there safely. R & I eat cake & wait for Pablo to finish his guitar lesson & I listen to some of the new mixes for the CD on his iPod. Pablo has done great work, removing the noise, selecting an interesting progression of solos from the sometimes huge swath of everyone recording everything on separate tracks. Soon P arrives— it’s good to see the boy—& we set off for Marcelo’s studio in Sta. Teresa. TaxiPaulo arrives there shortly after we do & soon he (a former recording engineer in the pre-computer days) & Marcelo & Pablo are into it, and R & I settle back to listen, as we are only really there as part of Team Pablo.
Two hours later the tech-guys seem to be in accord & we will master there at the start of July, after we have finished recording the last tracks. TP & M are suitably impressed w/ what Pablo has done w/ a really spartan recording system, so he is happy. I’m to come up w/ a tune order for the CD before we get to the mastering stage—something I like to do—and the boys ask me to write a blurb for the CD as well.
So Friday I write CD notes & credits all morning. & make final choices on concert rep & go get music copied @ UniRio for my concert w/ PauloSa. & eat my frequent lunch of acai & grilled chicken sandwich @ the botequim on the corner of Praia Vermelha on the
way home. (My favorite counter-guy is there & he brings the acai heaped up like an ice cream cone over the top of the cup and says welcome back w/ his contagious smile.) & I walk home & email the program to P. & finish memorizing Diabinho Maluco. & drive myself crazy trying to decipher the Luperce waltz from my video of Pedro. I finally write down the 1st section as close as I can get it and I’ll get Jesse to help me correct it tomorrow.
And I’m going to stop for now, and continue w/ week 2 later. Time to get out of the house, so I’m off to walk around Ipanema & get a late lunch & hopefully a small-size dictionary. Maybe even some music books or CDs @ Toca de Vinicius… I hope all goes well w/ y’all, and I will be back w/ more soon! I know most of you like to read these rambling travelogue-blogs & see the pics, because you’ve told me so. But if any of you are
tired of them just let me know & I’ll take you off. Or if the couple of you who I added are totally confused, you can either hang in, beg off, or read earlier logs on my website to catch up w/ the cast of characters that is my life in Rio. For me, it helps me feel more grounded to ink these fleeting events as they pass and share them w/ y’all now, because I’ll never remember or have time when I see you again.
So tchau, um beijo, & enjoy the pics!
m
