Henrique Gomide & Daphne Oltheten Brasis - Sonho de La - CR73580 - Jazz

The musical universe we present on this album is, in some form, our dream of Brazil. The Brazil of diversity, the Brazil that even in the face of injustice and difficulties remains inventive and incomparably creative. In this project, we dream of a Brazil with unique rhythmic, harmonic, melodic and aesthetic beauty. The Brazil of our masters: Pixinguinha, Moacir Santos, Baden Powell and Egberto Gismonti. A country that continues to innovate and reinvent itself. With Sonho de lá, the fruit of our daydreams, musings and musical experiments, we offer another contribution to highlight the piano-violin duo and its vast possibilities within the rich repertoire of Brazilian music. This work is a continuation of the research we began on our last album Brasis. The combination of piano and violin has already been widely explored in the realm of classical music, in the universe of chamber music. Some people say that of all the possible instrumental duets, the piano and violin boast the widest written musical repertoire. However, when we are talking about Brazilian popular music, there is still much to discover and a lot of room to experiment with this musical combination. It’s not that bowed string instruments aren’t a part of Brazilian culture. On the contrary, Brazil has a long tradition of using the rabeca (a fiddle that predates the modern violin) in popular music. We find this instrument in numerous folkloric musical styles such as fandango, moçambique, congada, folia do Divino, folia-de-reis and others. Yet in popular music, the specific combination of piano and violin has rarely been explored. We can only think of a few rare exceptions, like the albums Fafá & Carolina, a duet between violinist Fafá Lemos (1921-2004) and pianist Carolina Cardoso de Menezes (1913-2000) released in 1989, and the album Duo by Ricardo Herz (1978) and Nelson Ayres (1947), released in 2017.