Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Laurindo Almeida was born Laurindo Jose de Araujo Almeida Nobrega Neto was born in the village of Prainha, Brazil on September 2, 1917. A self-taught guitarist, during his teenage years, he moved to São Paulo, worked as a radio artist, staff arranger and nightclub performer. At 19, he worked his way to Europe playing guitar in a cruise ship orchestra. While in Paris, he attended a performance at the Hot Club by Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, who became a lifelong artistic inspiration.
Returning to Brazil, Laurindo composed, performed and became known for playing classical Spanish and popular guitar. He moved to the United States in 1947 when one of his songs “Johnny Peddler” became a hit record by the Andrew Sisters. Once in Los Angeles, Almeida immediately went to work in film studio orchestras.
Almeida was first introduced to the jazz public as a featured guitarist with the Stan Kenton band in the late 1940s during the height of its success. His recording career enjoyed auspicious early success with the 1953 recordings now called Brazilliance No. 1 and No. 2 that was widely regarded as “landmark” recordings. Almeida and Shank’s combination of Brazilian and jazz rhythms in which Almeida coined the term “samba-jazz”. He would go on to have a classical solo recording career with Capitol Records beginning in 1954, winning a Grammy at the first awards ceremony.
Almeida won five career Grammys, toured, recorded and performed with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Charlie Byrd, Baden Powell, Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, Larry Coryell, Ray Brown, Shelly Manne and Jeff Hamilton to name a few. In addition he performed on more than 800 motion picture and television soundtracks such as The High Chaparral, Peter Gunn, Funny Girl, The Godfather and Unforgiven. He has been inducted into Fanfare’s Classical Recording Hall of Fame, received the Latin American & Caribbean Cultural Society Award and was awarded the “Comendador da Ordem do Rio Branco” by the Brazilian government.
Guitarist, composer and educator Laurindo Almeida was taught, recorded and performed until the week before passing away on July 26, 1995 at age 77 in Van Nuys, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paulo Moura was born on July 15, 1932 in Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Brazil. His father, a maestro of a marching band, encouraged his son to train as a tailor but Paulo instead studied in the National Music School and performed with the Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra.
He was the first black artist to become first clarinetist in the Municipal Theatre Orchestra. He appeared at Bossa Nova night at Carnegie Hall in 1962 with Sergio Mendes and both were featured on Cannonball Adderley’s 1962 album, Cannonball’s Bossa Nova.
From 1997 to 1999, Paulo was on the State Council of Culture in Rio de Janiero, a Councillor of the Federal Council of Music, and President of the Museum Foundation of Image and Sound. In 2000, Moura became the first Brazilian instrumentalist to win the Latin Grammy.
He won the Sharp Award for the most popular instrumentalist of the year in 1992. His CD “Paulo Moura e Os Oito Batutas” was listed by Barnes & Noble as one of the top 10 recommendations of the year for 1998. Clarinetist and saxophonist Paulo Moura passed away of lymphoma on July 12, 2010 just three days before his 78th birthday.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ivan Lins was born on June 16, 1945 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He began studies at the Military College in Rio, received an industrial chemical engineering degree from the Federal University and spending several years in Boston, Massachusetts with his naval engineer father, he continued his graduate studies at M.I.T. He considered a career in volleyball before discovering his considerable musical talent.
As a pianist Luiz Eça and João Donato influenced Lins. While in college he performed in a jazz-bossa trio. In 1970 Ivan started his music career by winning second place in a competition with the song “O Amor É o Meu País” and that same year famed Brazilian singer Elis Regina recorded his composition “Madalena”. He would host the TV Globo show Som Livre Exportaçã, partner with Vitor Martins and the two would become MPB history with romantic verses and political anthems.
His influence of jazz and bossa nova became evident in his music and an invitation from Quincy Jones brought him to international attention. Quincy recorded “Velas” (Sails) which won a Grammy, and George Benson recorded his Love Dance, and Paul Winter recorded “Velho Sertão”, renaming it Common Ground. It wasn’t too longer afterward that jazz artists like Patti Austin, Herbie Mann, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Pass, Diane Schuur, Manhattan Transfer and Ella Fitzgerald were recording his melodies.
He has recorded three-dozen albums, won two Latin Grammy awards, has won Best MPB Album of the Year, and many of his tunes have been part of Grammy winning albums and is one of the three most recorded Brazilian composers outside their native land.
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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