Celebrating a Legend of Brazilian Jazz in New York

On September 23, audiences were treated to the music of Brazilian jazz legend Paulo Moura in New York by longtime Moura enthusiast and jazz pianist Cliff Korman and his ensemble. The group was made up of Korman, bassist Augusto Mattoso, drummer Pascoal Meirelles, and special guest sax player Billy Drewes. The concert took place at (le) poisson rouge, a club that opened in 2008 at the site of the former Village Gate, a nightclub that for almost 40 years featured musicians such as John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Bill Evans, and Dave Brubeck. The concert was presented in collaboration with the Savassi Festival, a celebration of jazz and Brazilian music founded in Belo Horizonte in 2003 that presented its first New York edition this month.  

The program for the concert featured a range of Moura’s compositions from the upbeat Mulatas, Etc. e Tal to the more contemplative Tempos Felizes. The evening ended with an original piece by Korman in honor of the jazz great entitled Saudade do Paulo. The title, as Korman described, was meant not as a solemn farewell but a grateful goodbye for a musician whose impact on the jazz world lives on. 

With a career spanning six decades, Moura’s musical legacy traverses twentieth-century Brazilian music. The youngest of a family of musicians, Moura began his career as a clarinetist in his father’s band in the gafieira dance halls of their hometown in the interior of São Paulo state. He moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro—Brazil’s center of urban music—in 1945, where he studied theory, harmony, and clarinet at the Escola Nacional de Música. At the same time he had his first contact with modern jazz through listening and playing sessions at the home of an acquaintance and as a frequent participant of the Sinatra-Farney fan club (1948-53).

He quickly made his mark as a versatile instrumentalist, working as a studio musician in live radio orchestras and dance halls. He also performed as a soloist with the symphony orchestra of the Teatro Municipal and with big bands and the orchestras that accompanied visiting international artists such as Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. Along with a group of musicians that included João Donato and Johnny Alf, Mauricio Einhorn, and Dom um Romão and Edson Machado, he was taken by the sound and language of American jazz artists of the era, and worked to develop similar fluency as an improviser. As a participant in the emerging bossa and samba-jazz movements, he performed, arranged for, and recorded with Sergio Mendes’ Bossa Jazz ensemble and traveled with this group to New York to participate in the famous “Bossa Nova: (New Brazilian Jazz)” concert at Carnegie Hall on November 21, 1962. Later that year, the group recorded with Cannonball Adderley.

Moura’s belief that his most profound and inspiring source material lay in Brazilian culture led him to experiment with, champion, and revitalize a variety of genres, including choro, gafieira, afro-samba, samba-jazz, and música erudita brasileira.