Jazz artist Antonio Adolfo and a
Soundings Read Spanish Version
Jazz artist Antonio Adolfo and a “revolution with beauty”
By
David Whitman
Soundings
– Arts in Depth is a new monthly column which will explore Miami’s
tropical, cross-cultural currents.
Cool,
swaying, seductive and sophisticated, a new sound emerged fifty years
ago at the crossroads of samba and jazz in Rio de Janeiro. Known as
bossa
nova
(“new flair”), it blended—like Brazil itself—elements from
Africa, Europe and the Americas.
In
the 1950s, Rio’s more affluent residents had access to music
education and places to listen to jazz recordings. Trained guitarists
discovered then that jazz-influenced chords could be played far more
comfortably than conventional Brazilian guitar fingerings allowed.
The resulting sound was softer, more sophisticated: bossa nova, a
“revolution with beauty” in the words of three of its legendary
founders, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes and Carlos
Lyra.
The
bossa movement took hold in the apartments of Copacabana and Ipanema,
in bossa academies, at university music festivals and in a lively
alley in Copacabana. Called the Beco
das Garrafas
(Bottle Alley), its colorful bars attracted prostitutes, late-night
carousers and musicians experimenting with jazz. From neighboring
residential buildings, bottles were often hurled at the boisterous
crowd below, giving the alley its popular name.
In
1956, Jobim teamed up with Vinícius in the revolutionary
musical drama “Orfeu
da Conceição.”
The play’s film adaptation “Orfeu
Negro”
(Black Orpheus), won the Palme
d’Or
at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film.
As
the ’50s came to an end, bossa nova was propelled from Rio’s
magnificent Teatro Municipal onto the world stage. João
Gilberto, who had come to Rio from Bahia, became bossa’s first
major artist. Bossa nova’s poetic lyrics, distinctive rhythms,
breezy vocals and sophisticated harmonic complexities soon
reverberated far beyond Brazil. In 1962, Jobim and Vinícius
introduced the world to Rio’s fashionable Ipanema Beach with
“Garota
de Ipanema”
(Girl from Ipanema), one of the most recorded songs of all time.
Among
those who found musical inspiration in Rio during those eventful
years was a boy named Antonio Adolfo. The son of Yolanda Maurity, a
music teacher and orchestral violinist at the same theater where
“Orfeu”
was staged, Antonio started violin lessons at age seven and piano at
15.
While
still a teenager, Antonio performed regularly at Bottle Alley. He
describes the narrow street with its high-society visitors then as
“three hookers’ bars and another where jazz was played, the Bar
das Garrafas
(Bottles Bar). It was dark, smoky and noisy, and had maybe 15 tables
and an upright piano against the wall. No stage. Whiskey and Cuba
libres were popular at that time.”
As
bottles rained down on Bottle Alley, pure jazz reigned at the Bottles
Bar from 1959 to 1962. Chet Baker was popular. Then the Copa Trio
started to play “samba-jazz” there, fusing jazz with bossa nova.
Brazilian
greats Leny Andrade, Sérgio Mendes and Elis Regina performed
there, too, and foreign
jazz artists started to appear at the Bottles Bar late at night,
after their performances in Rio’s concert halls. Horace
Silver, Paul Winter, the Modern Jazz Quartet and other jazz legends
jammed with the local musicians.
From
his gigs at the Bottles Bar, young Antonio Adolfo was invited by
Vinícius and Lyra to perform as a musician in their play
“Pobre
Menina Rica.”
From there he started accompanying important artists of Brazilian
popular music, including one of Brazil’s best-known singers of that
period, Elis Regina. Adolfo remembers reaction to the new Brazilian
sound on their European concert tours: “sophisticated and exotic.”
Adolfo
was 20 when he traded law studies at the university for the more
bohemian life as a professional musician, composing his first major
song, “Sá
Marina,”
on guitar and piano. It was one of the earliest bossa-influenced
toadas
(a traditional musical style favored by guitarists from the interior
of Brazil) to become a hit, and it catapulted Adolfo into his new
career.
Adolfo
collaborated with lyricist Tibério Gaspar on “Sá
Marina.”
Marilyn
Bergman, who
is now the president of the American Society of Composers, Authors,
and Publishers (ASCAP), and her husband Alan
Bergman penned
the English lyrics. “Unfortunately,” says Adolfo, smiling, “they
gave it a title in English that we Brazilians can’t easily
pronounce: Pretty
World.”
He quietly repeats the title a few more times, attempting the elusive
American pronunciation.
During
the past four decades more than 200 artists have recorded that song,
including Stevie Wonder, Sergio Mendes, Earl Klugh, Joe Cocker, Herb
Alpert and the composer himself on his most recent CD, “Antonio
Adolfo e Carol Saboya Ao Vivo,” selected
as the best 2007 recording of Brazilian music in the United States.
A
renowned pianist, Adolfo also plays guitar, violin and percussion. He
has performed and recorded with many of the best-known musicians of
our times, from Mick Jagger to Toots Thielemans. His compositions
have been recorded by a constellation of stars, including Nara Leão,
Elis Regina, Emílio Santiago, Beth Carvalho and Dionne
Warwick. As an arranger, he has worked with Elizeth Cardoso, Rita
Lee, Maria Bethânia and many others. During the mid-60s, Adolfo
was a frequent guest at Jobim’s home in Rio, a popular gathering
place for musicians. He later taught Jobim’s daughter, son and
grandson.
In
1977, he said “bye-bye Brazil,” moving to Paris with his wife Ana
to escape the commercialism of the music world and to delve into
macrobiotics.
In
Paris he had the good fortune to audition for one of the greatest
music teachers of the 20th
century, Nadia Boulanger. A friend had recommended Adolfo and she
granted the young pianist a 15-minute audition between students. On
the way, traffic-choked streets caused him to arrive five minutes
late and out of breath, having had to abandon the car to Ana and
sprint the final blocks to Boulanger’s studio. Nervous, sweating,
panting and with just ten minutes to make an impression, Adolfo
started playing something from the classical repertoire. Boulanger
stopped him. “Play what you truly want
to play,” she urged him. Taking a deep breath, he shifted to his
beloved Brazilian music, allowing it to flow from his heart to the
piano. Boulanger’s expression changed to a beneficent smile, and
she took him on as a student, admonishing him never again to arrive
late.
At
that audition, Adolfo discovered a key to his new teacher’s
influence on generations of musicians: “She taught technique and
passion.” Adolfo, Ana and Boulanger became friends. When the couple
returned to Rio in 1975 for the birth of their first child, Boulanger
wept.
Back
in Rio, Adolfo launched an independent recording label, Artezanal, to
champion his music and the works of 19th
and early 20th
century compatriot composers Ernesto Nazareth, Chiquinha Gonzaga and
João Pernambuco. Inspired by his mentor in Paris, he also
started teaching privately at his home and found that he loved it. He
says that, like Nadia Boulanger, he looks for passion in his
students, encouraging them to play both expressively and
thoughtfully.
His
lessons are highly personalized. At one of my first piano lessons
with Adolfo, we discussed the bittersweet sentiment of “saudade,”
or longing, that seems synonymous with being Brazilian. He
demonstrated how saudade
can be expressed musically through particular chords and intervals,
shifts in key, descending melody lines, rhythmic changes. Beyond the
music theory and mathematical beauty of his explanation, it was
fascinating to contemplate how vibrations of an instrument—sound
waves, music—can convey complex emotions like saudade.
Adolfo
enjoys working with musicians of all ages and abilities, from
children to professionals. He has taught in Los Angeles, New York,
Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami as well as in Brazil, Denmark and the
Netherlands. He started the Centro Musical Antonio Adolfo in Rio in
1985, now that city’s leading music school with more than 1,000
students at three sites.
With
the popularity of his music school in Rio, Adolfo decided last summer
to start a series of weekend Brazilian music workshops in Hollywood,
Florida. He wanted to do something meaningful in South Florida, his
second home. “Nowadays, teaching is my most useful activity.”
The
first workshops had such a tremendous response that Adolfo soon
expanded to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings to accommodate
the demand for lessons. The school offers solo and ensemble classes
in various instruments, focusing on jazz and Brazilian genres in
addition to music in general.
Artist
Eleonora Goretkin takes voice and ensemble lessons there. “This
school is a part of Brazil here in Florida, a place for people who
love Brazil and Brazilian music,” she says. Goretkin remembers
singing “Sá
Marina”
as a child in Rio and can’t believe that today she sings it with
the composer himself. I asked what images bossa nova music evokes for
her. “Bossa captures the mood and the landscapes of Rio,” she
explained, lost for a moment in her thoughts. “It’s like gliding
over the city.”
Brad
Hartung of North Miami Beach studies piano with Adolfo, focusing on
the music of Jobim. Although he has not yet visited Brazil and is a
relative newcomer to its music, bossa resonates with him. “Bossa
nova is textured, rich, simple, complex, and sounds good at all skill
levels,” he says. About his teacher: “It’s unusual in life to
come into contact with someone so talented, and then to get access to
him as a teacher. Antonio is a master.”
Attending
an ensemble class one Saturday afternoon recently, I watched Adolfo
in action with eight musicians rehearsing Hermeto Pascoal’s “Bebê”
for an upcoming gig at the Hollywood Beach bandshell. The musicians
hailed from the U.S., Brazil, Puerto Rico and the Czech Republic.
Other than music, the unifying language in the studio is English
(spoken with diverse accents, another form of musicality), with
occasional comments in Portuguese, Spanish and French.
As
the improvisation started to stray, the maestro stopped the ensemble
with a wave of his hand. “F-sharp minor…I’m not feeling
it!” Then, setting the rhythm again with his triangle, “1-2,
1-2-3-4,” the rehearsal continued. And this time, F-sharp minor
emerged from the shadows.
Weaving
through the performers, Adolfo encouraged the ensemble members using
various percussive instruments along with his body language, facial
expressions, eye contact, and creative vocalizing (clicks, humming,
singing, harmonizing, whispering). By the end of the session, Hermeto
Pascoal’s complex music had emerged, cohesive and uplifting, and I
observed smiles all around the studio. And, at that moment, it seemed
to me that Antonio Adolfo—performer, composer, arranger, educator,
author and producer—had the most radiant smile of all.
The
author, David Whitman, is a writer and international photographer
whose arts column “Soundings” appears here monthly.
Visit
antonioadolfo.net
for more information on Antonio Adolfo’s Brazilian Music Workshops.
