Henrique Gomide Portais - Cr73568 - Jazz - by Challenge Records

Henrique’s arrangements for these songs are ingenious, refined and full of life, without artificially forcing any unnecessary originality. In addition to these fundamental pieces, there are also the ‘miniaturas’, which bring Henrique’s signature to the album as a composer. When I received the album, the pieces – brief, aphoristic and strongly suggestive – intrigued me as much as delighted me. I began to envisage, and suggest to Henrique, ways of ordering them. I felt these little improvisations were contrasts of simplicity in the face of such a monumental repertoire, so replete with significance for us Brazilians. Gradually I came to understand a second meaning to the pieces: they are like inevitable bursts of creativity from a pianist who is also a composer. Fragments of Henrique’s intense inventiveness at the piano, whose hands are always throwing forth spontaneous ideas, which I have had the good fortune to witness for many years as his colleague and contemporary. Any musician knows that when preparing a repertoire, we try to get the music “under our fingers.” The music of the score must become ours, it must be embodied. The work of preparation, which is repetitive, is so that the repertoire leaves the paper and enters our blood stream, so that it pulses inside us and becomes part of our movement. The ‘miniaturas’ of Portais are creative eruptions derived from the study of great Brazilian composers. They are like transpirations of this process of metabolising the masters, by an interpreter whose inventiveness certainly points to subsequent work as a composer.”