Over the course of the fifteen years
Cliff Korman has traveled between New York and Rio de Janeiro,
he has developed two points of observation from which he views
the intersections and divergences between Jazz and Brazilian
Instrumental Music. One goes from Brasil to New York, and the
other from New York to Brasil.
RODA
DE
JAZZ
The first concerns the unique color, the
“tinge” as Jelly Roll Morton put it when referring
to Latin (Afro-Caribbean) inflections, with which Brazilian
music has infused Jazz in the past four decades. The second
considers the way Jazz has become part of the grammar of many
contemporary Brazilian musicians.
The two musics, however strongly
compatible, are not at all the same. Their dialogue is more
profound and understated than the public at large often tends
to think and far less obvious that the simple adoption of
Brazilian standards among the practitioners of Jazz or that of
Jazz standards and patterns among the Brazilian
instrumentalists. Artists like Egberto Gismonti and Wayne
Shorter have historically penetrated secrets of the two
languages that make their intertwining as unassuming as it is
meaningful and powerful. Cliff Korman has long pursued the
threads of this subterranean exchange and created two specular
performance projects and a lecture series: “The Brazilian
Tinge” and “Roda de Jazz”(Jazz Circle).
“The Tinge” is about to
become CD and explores the influences of Brazilian music on
Jazz. It features David Finck, Paulo Braga and a number of
special guests.
The Roda originated during Korman’s
Fulbright residence in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, when he had
the opportunity to work closely with many Brazilian
instrumentalists, composers and arrangers, and share first hand
their use and creative manipulation of the Jazz language. The
performance’s format is that of a traditional choro group
where the concept of “jam” is paired and replaced
with that of “roda”. The show includes Cliff Korman
on piano and a selected Brazilian band which will present a
Brazilian, Jazz and original repertoire bringing a jazz
component to idiomatic and experimental Brazilian forms,
rhythms and concepts.