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Liner
Notes to Quarteto Jobim-Morelenbaum CD
by
Caetano Veloso
When Jaques
Morelenbaum -
once the song has been completely introduced by the harmonious
contrast between Daniel's whisper and Paula's diamond-cut brilliance -
improvises
on the chords of "Meditação", we hear echoes of
"Desafinado",
and even more hidden, other songs composed by Tom Jobim; we also hear,
further yet, echoes of themes not present in the Maestro's work but
nonetheless in the same family as those that are - all this comes as if
filtered by Jaques' sensitivity and taste: what he has reaped from his
links with classical music (principally the romantics), jazz, English
neo-rock 'n roll - and the fate-full melancholy of eastern Europe - all
work to transform phrases of the Jobim family of musical phrases into
musical phrases of the Morelenbaum family.
Tom died too soon for
our expectation. But it is out great luck that he left his work in such
good hands:
his son Paulo and grandson Daniel inherited not only the care of the
repertory
but also the musicality with which the continue to create within and
beyond
this repertory; Jaques and his wife Paula had been relatively recent
acquisitions
of the composer; at the time in which Tom, many years after the bossa
nova
explosion, gathered together a group of young female singers and young
male
musicians for rare and most pleasing presentations in order to answer
the
demand for shows across the world. (These shows were indeed most
pleasing
rare, although always musically rigorous and tinted with a hint of
irony
perhaps somewhat sinister, due to the very presence of Tom with his
breathy
voice, that voice both matte and transcendent, and his stage craft
weaving
between solemnity and deceptively silly humor).
From these shows the
Jobim-Morelenbaum Quartet was born, which for me functions as a sort of
filtered extract of the musical experience of Tom's final years.
In this first recording, we find musically correct and fresh versions
of some of the bossa nova standards ("Água de beber", "Ela
é carioca", "Meditação" and "Desafinado"), some
sambas from the pre-bossa nova era composed especially for the film
"Orfeu da Conceição" ("A felicidade", "Eu e meu amor" and
"Lamento no morro"), and lastly some of his most fulfilled pieces
("Águas de março", "Correnteza" and "O boto"), those
composed by a mature Tom, that are laced with a rural
Northeastern flavor and were composed when, free of the movement that
made him famous, he could finally be himself, a loner, with no dues
left to pay to the minimalist laws that molded his well-known style,
and so could give himself up entirely to his fundamental identification
with Villa Lobos and "serious" Brazilian music of the nationalist vein,
coinciding with what came to be called, in almost direct opposition to
bossa nova, "MPB" (Popular Brazilian Music): the attraction for a
stylized Brazilian Northeast, as presented in Edu Lobo's work and
working its way to Milton Nascimento and other musicians from the state
of Minas Gerais,
and on. But in this case here, ruralism undergoes a very particular
stylization.
There is a sense of elegance in every line that is unique, Jobimian.
In fact it is the
profound understanding of this sense of elegance that the Quartet
exhibits with such moving natural grace and devotion. Paula presents
the melodies with perfect limpidity (both musical and emotional);
Daniel always finds the notes that best reveal the composition's
harmonic genius and places them under Paula's voice as if they simply
flowed forth by natural necessity. (When he himself is alone with the
principal melody, the similarity his voice and his grandfather's voice
does not complicate the task of admiring both, on the contrary, the
freshness of his youth and the authority with which he comments on the
real identification leave us humbled and thus free to love); Paulo, who
in addition to singing the sambas (as well as "Desafinado") with utter
precision, gives us the only composition that is not Tom's: the
beautiful "Mantiqueira Range" - he is direct descendant, the center and
guardian while Daniel is the freed spirit, the very proof of how
unnecessary reincarnation is; Jaques is the bond, pure and flexible,
that encounter that all of them (Tom, Paula, Paulo, Daniel) had to have
in their lives.
Percussionists Marcelo
Costa & Marcos Suzano, as well as bassist Zeca
Assumpção, guests on this recording, all brought in what
they do best, in mint condition.
This recording, this
quartet - is a miracle that "happened" as if it were a simple daily
occurrence. Perhaps in stores or on airplanes it will be classified as
"easy listening", but
the fact is that it is a rare event. For this reason it requires care,
concentration and contrition so as not to run the risk of listening to
it with pleasure but without property.
Caetano Veloso
English version:
Deborah Cohen
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