AAM Music
ANTONIO ADOLFO – piano;
LULA GALVÃO – electric and acoustic guitar;
JORGE HELDER – acoustic bass;
RAFAEL BARATA – drums, percussion;
JESSE SADOC – trumpet, flugelhorn;
DANILO SINNA – alto saxophone;
MARCELO MARTINS – tenor saxophone, flute;
RAFAEL ROCHA – trombone;
ANDRÉ SIQUEIRA – percussion;
Special guests: LEO GANDELMAN – saxophone;
THOM ROTELLA – guitar
In Brazil’s Northeast, women have long carried balaios on their heads — woven baskets of vine and straw, filled with food, or whatever the day asked of them. The basket itself is simple. What it symbolizes though is work, ancestry, and abundance. Antonio Adolfo takes that symbolism and fills his own basket with music, calling the record Balaios — nine songs gathered from different points across his life.
Six decades of writing his own music, and he’s still reaching back through it, still finding songs worth pulling out and dusting off. “3D Blues,” a blend of swing, baião, and samba jazz, dates back to 1965, an early sign of just how naturally Adolfo could fuse Brazilian rhythm with American jazz. Danilo Sinna’s alto sax lines flow with effortless, legato grace, until Jesse Sadoc’s trumpet crashes through, spitting out high notes like a swarm of angry wasps let loose in the room. Adolfo’s piano solo answers with that conversational, lived-in quality that only comes from a lifetime spent playing this music.
The piano leads a gentle swing on “Claudia” while a guitar strums quietly, its tone too pretty to stay in the background for long. Horns swell and recede wave-like, guitar lines slipping through in brief, lovely snatches. Sadoc’s trumpet stays melodic. His bright, clear tone riding a dance beat that’s hard not to sway to. Special guest Thom Rotella takes his own guitar solo over unison horns before piano steps back to the front, echoing where the tune began.
The ensemble locks in tight on “San Expedito,” then Lula Galvão slips his guitar in underneath, half-hidden by the horns crowding around him. A sax solo rides a swell of percussion before Galvão is back, louder this time, notes ringing out. Piano and horns kick off “Sambalaio” with a groove smooth enough to resemble a detective show soundtrack. A sax solo floats through the air before a trombone comes in playing with phrasing, notes sliding into one another, then biting and jagged the next.
There’s a tenderness running through the record’s middle stretch. “Love Will Come” trades quiet phrases between piano and ensemble, somber without tipping into gloom. “My Chant” — the last tune Adolfo wrote with longtime partner Tibério Gaspar before his passing — has a melody simple enough to hum on a walk. “Vision” leans on Rocha’s trombone to tell the story, expressive pretty notes riding a steady pulse underneath.
“Journey to the Interior” opens loose, everyone jumping in together over a walking bass line, before a flute solo breaks off into syncopated fragments instead of running smooth. The trumpet answers with clipped triplets, tossed off like they’re no trouble at all. The album closes on “Zah Toom Toom,” a funk groove straight out of the seventies, horns riding a repeated phrase while the piano keeps slipping in these little single-note asides — the kind of playing that just sounds cool without trying to.
The basket’s still full. Adolfo just keeps finding room for more.