New tracks for old maestros.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Music Notes

Moacir Santos Ouro Negro (MP,B 325912001312)

Although he departed his native Brazil over three decades ago to begin a new career in the U.S., the seventy-seven-year-old Moacir Santos Ouro Negro has remained an important source of artistic inspiration for successive generations of Brazilian instrumentalists. He may not be as well known abroad as other Brazilian musicians of his generation, but Santos is an exceptionally gifted composer and arranger whose best work reflects the same level of genius that characterizes the artistry of such icons of twentieth-century popular music as Duke Ellington and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Born in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, in the late 1940s Santos moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he studied harmony and composition with some of Brazil's classical musicians. His polished music skills soon landed him work with the country's major radio network as a staff arranger and conductor. By the time the bossa nova revolution arrived in the late 1950s, he was firmly established as one of his country's most respected musicians. He became a teacher and mentor of such budding talent as guitarists Baden Powell and Roberto Menescal, pianist Eumir Deodato, and saxophonist Paulo Moura, among many others.

One of the few Brazilians of African descent to make a mark as a composer and arranger during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, Santos audaciously added the rhythmically distinctive flavor of Afro-Brazilian forms to his harmonically rich and compositionally complex works. He created a new music dialect in a land well known for its stylistic diversity, and his landmark 1965 album Coisas remains an important touchstone of modern Brazilian instrumental music.

Santos reprises on two CDs twenty-eight performances originally recorded on Coisas, four albums produced for the U.S. market in the 1970s, and a late 1990s project in Brazil. A large, all-star orchestra comprising Brazil's most acclaimed instrumentalists is augmented on several tracks by such guest vocalists as Milton Nascimento, Joao Bosco, and Joyce. The maestro himself sings and plays baritone sax on a few tracks, adding a poignant touch to a majestic program of evocative themes and intricate arrangements that combine the most compelling elements of jazz, classical, and Afro-Brazilian traditions.

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