A tale of two maestros.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: MUSIC

In over three decades of leading one of the busiest big bands of the Americas, Marcos Szpilman has experienced just about everything that can possibly happen when his nineteen-piece group sets out for yet another performance. There have been bus breakdowns, absent musicians, and missing music. His car has been stolen with irreplaceable arrangements stashed in the think. One of his key band members was even a homicide victim. On this day, at a shopping mall in the most distant reaches of Rio de Janeiro's southernmost neighborhood, the leader of Brazil's famed Rio Jazz Orchestra (RJO) is not facing life-and-death issues, but plenty of minor setbacks. The band will perform in the parking lot of the mall on a stage that's far too small, with scant time to set up and fine-tune the all-important sound system. His musicians--some with wives, kids, or girlfriends in tow--straggle in, many at the last minute. On this Sunday afternoon a month before Christmas, there are five replacement musicians that Szpilman has never worked with before--fill-ins for regulars who have found better things to do or more money to make elsewhere with other groups. They haven't bothered to inform him beforehand.

But that's just the beginning of this day's woes. As the musicians mill about, a gregarious announcer commands the stage with Pal Noel (Santa Claus) at his side, pitching the mall's many attractions to a small audience of mostly mothers and their children who huddle under a canopy as darkening skies threaten rain. When the band is finally assembled and Szpilman kicks off the first tune, the bearded, rotund Pal Noel remains a fixture of the cramped stage, his mechanical gestures in stark contrast to the snapping rhythms and surging energy of the RJO. The sound engineer struggles to get the band's many parts in balance, and the sound overwhelms the leader's singer-daughter Taryn, forcing her to sacrifice stylistic nuance for pure power to be heard above the din as she sings Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Corcovado." In front of the stage, a clown dances with giddy young girls. Off to the side, two performers on stilts, dressed in costumes from the Rio of the nineteenth century, swirl and sway as the band launches into the spirited pop samba "Flor de Lis," by composer Djavan. "This is crazy," Szpilman utters under his breath.

Half a continent away, Venezuela's best known bandleader sips an espresso in a cafe in Caracas's most important cultural center, the Teatro Teresa...