Paul: leader/acoustic bass |
SAMBIOSIS!
Samba inspired Jazz... Português
Standing as a bright contrast to the studied cool generally associated with the genre, SAMBIOSIS offers up a colourful, high energy symbiosis of jazz and samba. Citing Sergio Mendes' bands as a major influence, acoustic bassist Paul has collected and transcribed charts from Brazil as the impetus for dazzling jazz improvisation built on a frothy samba foundation. Topped off by a punchy, triple horn attack from tenor saxophonist Mike Murley, trumpeter Blaine Dunaway and saxophonist Chris Mitchell, SAMBIOSIS crosses musical borders, giving audiences a tantalizing taste of Rio's sultry sizzle at carnaval...
(from the 1998 Atlantic Jazz Festival Guide)
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SAMBIOSIS plays charts collected or transcribed from the Brazilian Jazz genre, as well as some Brazilian inspired originals and interpretations of jazz standards. The charts come from musicians I have played with in Brazil, my own transcriptions, arrangements and compositions. The band uses the charts as a vehicle for jazz improvisation with the basic idea of the samba as a guideline. The result is a "samba-jazz-fusion". The band is encouraged to cross traditional stylistic borders, but the basic idea of SAMBIOSIS is firmly rooted in the jazz and samba traditions. The project can accommodate a number of different configurations of instrumentation and players.
Background on SAMBIOSIS:
The name is a play on the word "symbiosis", which is defined as "the living together in close association of two dissimilar organisms, especially when mutually beneficial". My own definition of SAMBIOSIS is "the mutually beneficial association of jazz and samba". (The name also recalls the "infectious" nature of the samba, especially on jazz musicians who have been exposed!)
SAMBIOSIS is a concept modeled after Sergio Mendes' bands on various ground breaking albums such as Brazil ‘66 and The Beat Of Brazil. Mendes played acoustic piano along with the innovative Edison Machado on drums, Tiao Neto on bass, and various horn players including Raul de Souza on trombone. He also featured many compositions and arrangements by Moacir Santos, who now teaches in the US. In Brazil during the sixties there was a musical movement inspired by American Jazz (most notably groups like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Horace Silver's groups) that continues today. Many Brazilian musicians embraced the jazz idiom and created a new form of jazz inspired samba. They often jazzified tunes from the Bossa Nova and Samba repertoire by using instrumentation associated with the jazz tradition (piano, bass, drums, saxes, trumpets, trombones) and playing the tunes as jazz "heads" with lots of jazz style improvisation. Sergio Mendes was recognized as the main voice of this movement when it began.
Edison Machado is widely regarded as the Brazilian drummer who "jazzified the samba" and created the groove that became the percussive hallmark of the Bossa Nova. His own album, "Samba Novo" (1960's) featured his talents as an innovative drummer and band leader. He recorded another landmark album with Antonio Carlos Jobim in May, 1963 in New York city and was omni-present as a drummer in groups that have laid a foundation for Brazilian Popular Music in general. He inspired a whole generation of drummers and percussionists who followed him, including Airto Moreira. His last recording project was with his New York sextet Boa Nova, which featured all Brazilian musicians, and was inspired by his earlier bands. My inspiration for the Sambiosis project comes from having known Edison in the last few months of his life in Brazil. For these reasons I've thought of the project as a tribute to him.
SAMBIOSIS had its debut performance at the 1998 Atlantic Jazz Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with Paul (acoustic bass), Bob McLaren (drums), Brian Dickinson (piano), Mike Murley (tenor sax), Chris Mitchell (alto sax), and Blaine Dunaway (trumpet).
