Mario Adnet – Jobim Jazz
Mario Adnet
Jobim Jazz
(Adventure Music – 2007)
by Mark Ruffin
Mario Adnet last name looks like some kind of on-line ad agency, ad-net, but my Brazlian friends assure me it is Adnet. He is a guitarist and historian of what is called samba jazz. It’s samba with more meaty brass arrangements and harder edged improvisation than most samba music that comes out of Brazil. The biggest proponents of the style are composers Antonio Carlos Jobim and Moacir Santos, who was in the midst of an artistic comeback when he died last summer at the age of 80. Adnet was Santos’ right hand for the last six years of his life, and was one of the main forces behind that Jobim Symphonic project from two years ago. Clearly, the sonic legacy of both men is clearly safe in the hands of this gifted arranger.
However… this is not just another Jobim tribute record, it’s part of a historic documentation of rare Jobim songs, some making their North American debut. These beautiful gems only confirm what we already know; few people in the world can craft as beautiful a melody as Antonio Carlos Jobim.. just take a listen to Paulo Free Flight and you’ll hear the wordless vocals of Brazilian vocalist Joyce and some Stan Getz like sax riffing. The song, written in 1983, was from a Brazilian movie Gabriela and was inspired by his son Paulo Jobim.
A lot of this album sounds like Brazilian movie music because it is from Brazilian movies Jobim scored, and also from a track from the only non-Brazilian music he scored. Some of it sounds almost like music from a Fellini movie music in its whimsicalness and punchy brass. There are Jobim standards too like So Danco Samba, Stone Flower, which was made famous by Carlos Santana and Orpheus Frevo from the most famous movie with Jobim songs, Black Orpheus.
But again for me it’s these unearthed Jobim melodies that really attract me to this album, like Syncopated Sunday featuring Nailo Proveta on sax. Other names on this CD that may be known to American (besides Joyce) include the fabulous guitars of Romero Lubambo from Trio De Paz and Ricardo Silviera, and trombonist Vitor Santos.
