NYT review of Guinga

After Guinga played and I was chatting with Bill Bragin (who programs the amazing stuff at Joe's Pub), Bill was nice enough to introduce me to Jon Pareles of the New York Times. I recognized his face, having seen him at other concerts, but now I knew that he was The Big Critic. Well, I'm happy to report that he came across as rather humble, professing that I probably knew more about Guinga than he did, based on the fact that I have a blog about Brazilian music.

I'm reprinting his review here since the NYT will only let you access it a few more days until it goes into the payment-required archives:

A Heartfelt Connection to Brazil's Many Rhythms
By JON PARELES

The composer and guitarist Guinga, one of Brazil's modest musical treasures, slipped into Joe's Pub on Thursday night to make his New York City debut. In Brazil, he has won awards for his instrumental albums, has had his songs recorded by major singers like Elis Regina and Chico Buarque, and collaborates with leading Brazilian lyricists. No wonder: his melodies are bittersweet and irresistible, uniting musicianly cleverness with yearning emotion.

At Joe's Pub, Guinga (pronounced GEEN-ga; his full name is Carlos Althier de Souza Lemos Escobar) played light-fingered acoustic guitar, usually plucking rhythm parts while Lula Galvão on guitar, Paulo Sergio Santos on clarinet and Jesse Sadoc on trumpet and fluegelhorn took most of the solos. But he was no slouch playing alone, floating his tunes above cushiony chords.

Along with many of Brazil's best musicians, Guinga connects the harmonic richness of jazz to local styles, from samba and bossa nova to the bouncy rural baião. Like Astor Piazzolla in Argentina or George Gershwin in the United States, he makes sure that the heart comes through the ingenuity.

His tunes can go hopscotching through arpeggios that sketch subtle harmonic motion, yet seem like something anyone could whistle. They dart and zigzag, stopping and starting and veering at odd angles, yet still sound as if they're dancing. He sang a lullaby for his daughter that rose and fell in a graceful arc, with a reedy voice that was full of tenderness.

His group worked in permutations from solos to full quartet. Perpetual-motion webs of two-guitar picking could surround a kindly clarinet melody; the four musicians could split into counterpoint and reunite in precise parallel lines. The guitars could share easy-swinging chords behind a sultry, jazzy line with a touch of 1930's cabaret, or create a brisk ostinato behind a quick melody full of hairpin turns. The harmonies were deft, but Guinga didn't need them. In one piece, Mr. Sadoc simply stated the gorgeous ballad melody alone on fluegelhorn, and that was enough.