Joao Selva Maré Vai Subir

It's a recording that just a few years ago would have been mainstream: a "name" pianist (albeit one much less well known in the U.S. than elsehwere), who has been playing Mozart's piano concertos since childhood, joins forces with a name conductor with whom she has frequently collaborated, leading a modern-instrument orchestra of some 70 players, with the results released on a major international-conglomerate label. Now it's distinctly unusual. But lo, there's value in the old ways. Portuguese-Brazilian pianist Maria-João Pires is a lifelong Mozart specialist, but she still has new things to say in two of Mozart's most popular piano concertos. You can chalk it up to her Buddhist outlook if you like: her readings of the Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595, and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, might be described as detached without being lifeless. Her approach is most startling in the Piano Concerto No. 20, where her no-drama shaping of the material runs sharply counter to type. Sample the piano's entrance in the first movement, where it offers a twisting, tense elaboration of the main theme that is far removed from its source material. Generally pianists use this to raise the tension level, but Pires lets the unusually shaped, chromatic line speak for itself with fine effect.

A wonderful live set from Joao Gilberto - very intimate, with a spare, stripped down quality that shows him at his best! The album features Joao on acoustic guitar and vocals - with no other backing, holding up a wealth of emotion and fragile beauty with a few simple moves of his hand and voice, in that incredible way that few other bossa players ever managed to match!

Passion rather than insouciance is Pires’s keynote. Here is no soft, moonlit option but an intensity and drama that scorn all complacent salon or drawing-room expectations. How she relishes Chopin’s central storms, creating a vivid and spectacular yet unhistrionic contrast with all surrounding serenity or ‘embalmed darkness’. The con fuoco of Op. 15 No. 1 erupts in a fine fury and in the first Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 1, Pires’s sharp observance of Chopin’s appassionato marking comes like a prophecy of the coda’s sudden blaze. Such resolution and psychological awareness make you realize that Chopin, like D. H. Lawrence, may well have thought that “there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life”. Chopin, Pires informs us in no uncertain terms, was no sentimentalist.

Justifiably overshadowed by the peerless Getz/Gilberto album (which featured "Girl from Ipanema") from a year before, Getz/Gilberto #2 still holds its own with an appealing selection of fine jazz and bossa nova cuts. Unlike the first album's seamless collaboration by Getz, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, and Antonio Carlos Jobim, here Getz and João Gilberto turn in separate sets recorded live at Carnegie Hall in October of 1964. Backed by a stellar quartet comprised of vibraphonist Gary Burton, bassist Gene Cherico, and drummer Joe Hunt, Getz turns in a sparkling performances on the seldom covered ballad "Tonight I'll Shall Sleep with a Smile on My Face," while stretching out nicely on his original blues swinger "Stan's Blues…

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto '76 (2016) {Resonance Records HCD-2021 rec 1976}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 331 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 131 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 163 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1976, 2016 Resonance Records / Rising Jazz Stars | HCD-2021
Jazz / Post Bop / Bossa Nova / Saxophone / Guitar

Having reunited for 1976's The Best of Two Worlds, saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian singer/guitarist João Gilberto celebrated the album's release with a week of shows at San Francisco's Keystone Corner. Marking over a decade since the pair had made history with 1964's landmark Getz/Gilberto album, the shows, which took place between May 11-16, 1976, would prove one of the rare times they appeared live together. Resonance Records' 2016 album, Getz/Gilberto '76 (and the separate release Moments in Time), documents these shows via live recordings made by Keystone Korner club owner Todd Barkan.