Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paulinho da Costa was born Paulo Roberto da Costa on May 31, 1948 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Learning to play percussion as a child of five by exploring the different sounds of everything he could get his hands on. While still in his early teens, he joined several musical groups, traveling extensively throughout the world. Upon arriving in the United States, the multi-versed percussionist carved a sizable niche in the music community,
Over the course of five decades Paulinho has participated in thousands of recording sessions, performed on the soundtracks of nearly two hundred films and television shows, recorded seven albums as a leader for A&M, Concord and Pablo record labels, and has been a part of several Grammy winning albums.
He playing has crossed over to work in a variety of music genres including Brazilian, blues, Christian, country, disco, gospel, hip hop, jazz, Latin, pop, R & B, rock, soul and world.
He has performed, collaborated and recorded with an impressive list of musicians and vocalists from A to Z not limited to Bill Cunliffe, Chico Freeman, Chicago, Miles Davis, Earth Wind and Fire, Ricky Martin, Eliane Elias, Toots Thielemans, Sammy Nestico, Dizzy Gillespie, Cher, The Gap Band, Bobby McFerrin, Michael Jackson, Ramsey Lewis, Chet Atkins, Sadao Watanabe, Tori Amos, Stix Hooper and Quincy Jones to name just a few.
Percussionist Paulinho Da Costa is currently proficient on more than two hundred percussion instruments and is considered one of the most recorded musicians of modern times.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Claudio Roditi was born on May 28, 1946 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. He began his musical studies of trumpet when he was just five years old and his native Brazilian music nearly took a back seat as he became enamored with jazz recordings of Louis Armstrong, Harry James and other American trumpeters.
By 13, he became familiar with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. At the age of twenty, he was named a finalist in the International Jazz Competition in Vienna, and the following year, moved to Mexico City where he was active on the contemporary music scene. Relocating to Boston in 1970 he enrolled at the Berklee School of Music.
In 1976 Roditi moved to New York eventually establishing himself in the highly competitive atmosphere of the world’s jazz capital. He would go on to perform with Joe Henderson, Charlie Rouse, Herbie Mann, Tito Puente, McCoy Tyner, and Paquito D’Rivera. He has been a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra, The Jazz Masters led by Slide Hampton and his solo work Symphonic Bossa Nova with Ettore Stratta and the Royal Philharmonic earned Roditi a Grammy nomination in 1995 as well as Brazilliance X4 in 2010.
Claudio easily integrates post-bop elements and Brazilian rhythmic concepts, is in demand as a studio musician and a sideman, has composed, arranged and recorded seventeen critically acclaimed albums. The trumpeter currently tours leading his own band, is frequently travels as a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra and is on the faculty of the School of Contemporary Music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Elis Regina was born Elis Regina Carvalho Costa in Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo Brasil on March 17, 1945. She began her career as a singer at age 11 on a children’s radio show, O Clube Do Guri on Rádio Farroupilha. In 1959, Rádio Gaúcha contracted her and the next year she travelled to Rio de Janeiro where she recorded her first LP, Viva a Brotolândia (Long Live Teenage Land).
Following this debut she won her first festival song contest in 1965 singing Arrastão that launched her solo career. Recording her sophomore project Dois na Bossa, that became the first album to sell over a million copies, is considered the beginning of the new musical style MPB, Musica Popular Brasileira.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, she helped to popularize the work of the tropicalismo movement. Her 1974 collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Elis & Tom, has been cited as one of the greatest bossa nova albums of all time. Her earlier records were mostly apolitical but from the mid-’70s on, her music became more engaged, and she began to choose compositions and structure her conceptually complex live shows in ways as to criticize the military government, capitalism, racial and sexual injustice and other forms of inequality.
Her death from a cocaine, alcohol and temazepan interaction on January 19, 1982 at the age of 36 shocked Brazil. Elis Regina, singer of MPB, samba, jazz, bossa nova, rock and pop, is widely regarded as the best Brazilian singer of all times by many critics, musicians, and commentators.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sérgio Santos Mendes was born in Niteroi, Rio de Janiero, Brazil on February 11, 1941. S a child he attended the local conservancy with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late-1950s just as the jazz-inflected derivative of samba known as bossa nova emerged.
Mendes formed the Sexteto Bossa Rio, recorded Dance Moderna in 1961, toured Europe and the U.S., recorded with Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann, played Carnegie Hall and then moved to the States in 1964, cutting two albums for Capitol and Atlantic Records.
Sergio would join the Musicians Union, Create Brasil 65, change the name later to Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, opt not to record Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va” which would become a hit for Carlos Santana, release “Mas Que Nada” that would take them platinum. He would record “Look Around” and their fourth album “Fool On A Hill”.
His breakout success was with the performance of Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love” at the 1968 Academy Awards telecast, ultimately becoming the biggest Brazilian star in the world at the time. He would go on to record for Elektra, Bell, A&M and Concord record labels, collaborate with Stevie Wonder, reunite with Lani Hall on the Bond “Never Say Never Again” soundtrack, record with will.i.am and The Black Eyed Peas, Jill Scott, India Arie and others on his Timeless project, win several Grammys over the course of his fifty-five releases and be twice nominated for an Academy Award for the Look of Love and his contributions to the 2011 film “Rio”.
