BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento, by Leonid AUSKERN – Jazzquad

I have had the honor to present many works of the remarkable Brazilian jazz pianist and composer Antonio Adolfo on our website for several years and noticed that in recent years, veteran Brazilian jazz has been increasingly looking into the past, his albums have become clearly retrospective. Last year it was the Samba Jazz Alley album, where Adolfo recalled the times of his youth in Rio and the places where the musicians whom we know today as fathers of bossa nova and Brazilian jazz as a whole gathered. This year, Adolfo BruMa's new work: Celebrating Milton Nascimento is again painted in a light haze of nostalgia. This is a tribute album to Antonio's old friend, a man with whom they have known for more than half a century and the most prominent master of Brazilian popular music, Milton Nascimento.

Singer and composer Milton Nascimento (b.1942) is a visiting card of Brazilian pop music, just as, say, Antoniu Carlos Jobim is a visiting card of a bossa nova. The winner of the Grammy Award, as well as four Latin Grammys, Milton Nascimento is widely known throughout the world, with him working Hancock and Matini, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon. Many times performed with him and Antonio Adolfo. But for this album, he made new jazz arrangements of the most popular songs to Nascimento, including Encontros e Desperdidas, Caxanga and, of course, Tristesse and transformed their melodies and harmonies in a true jazz spirit.

In this album, a team of musicians, well known to him from previous projects, worked with Adolfo. An excellent wind section with Zadok, Martins and Rocha, Spivak’s extended range of guitar parts, but above all the inspirational play of the maestro himself at the piano turn each of the pieces in the album program into a small jazz masterpiece, preserving at the same time the characteristics of music to Nasimentu. And the final Tristesse is especially indicative here, where sweet sadness is literally spread in the world of sounds born by Adolfo, Martins on the flute and Amuledo on the guitar.

I am sure that the 78-year-old Nasimentu will appreciate this gift from an old friend. We will also appreciate it, listening to BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento.