Rio Minas, released via Arté Boréal Records, Zanella celebrates the affecting, sophisticated songwriting of two giants of Brazilian pop music, Chico Buarque, from Rio de Janeiro and Milton Nascimento, from Minas Geraes, a state in Southeast Brazil.
For Zanella, this is both a musical and a personal project.
“As a jazz musician, you learn the Great American Songbook and the work of the great songwriters, people like Cole Porter and George Gershwin, and that includes Antonio Carlos Jobim, and bossa nova becomes part of the repertoire,” says Zanella. But there is much, much more to Brazilian music than bossa nova and, bit by bit, he discovered the universe of Brazilian Popular Music (MPB in the Portuguese acronym) and the work of singers and songwriters such as Djavan, Ivan Lins and Milton Nascimento.
Then, beginning in 1987, a year after meeting his future wife, Mima Souza, a carioca (a native of Rio de Janeiro), Zanella began traveling to Brazil. The initial visit grew into a deep, rich musical experience, underlined by his collaborations with artists and groups such as the great composer, producer, guitarist and vocalist Roberto Menescal, singer/songwriters Marcos Valle and Altay Veloso; pianist Marcos Arie, and the vocal ensemble Boca Livre.
“You go to Brazil, you hear the music, you get involved with the people and the culture, and you just want to learn more,” says Zanella.
A Montreal native and graduate of Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Zanella soon made his mark both as a bandleader, recording nine albums, and also for his work with artists such as John Abercrombie, Bob Brookmeyer, Kenny Wheeler, and Aaron Parks.
In 2011, Zanella received the Oscar Peterson Award by the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal for his contributions to Canadian jazz.
Among those contributions was the work Zanella and his wife did bringing Brazilian musicians to perform in Montreal. “It was all handmade,” is how Zanella describes their efforts in the 1990s. “They would come and stay at our house, play in town and go home with a bit of pocket money and fun experiences.” They later founded the Brazilian Music Festival of Montreal (2004-2008).
Brazil loved him back. In 2004, Zanella was awarded the Ordem do Rio Branco by the Brazilian government for promoting cultural exchange between Brazil and Canada.
Rio Minas began as a one-time-only performance at Studio Victor in Montreal in 2015, an intimate show in front of a live audience.
Recalls Zanella. “It was Mima who suggested doing a concert with the music of Chico and Milton. I thought it was a great idea. I had done my first Brazilian album, Villa-Lobos & Antonio Carlos Jobim, in 2006, and I knew I wanted to continue exploring Brazilian music. And this project became my chance.”
Zanella collected a long list of songs that he pared down to a handful. “There were a lot of songs I loved, and I played around with a lot with arrangements,” he says. “But having to think in terms of playing these songs as instrumentals narrowed the choices.”
Picking songs by Milton Nascimento was easy, he says, because “there is always a jazz element in his music and you can hear it in his collaborations with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.” Fittingly, Rio Minas opens with “Lilia,” a song Shorter included in his album Native Dancer, which featured Nascimento.
Chico Buarque, a poet and a superb, highly literate lyricist, offered a different challenge.
“Chico is a composer I discovered later on as I learned about Brazilian music,” says Zanella. “And he's got these great repetitive melodies that are difficult to translate into instrumental versions. I feel they need the lyrics to carry them. So for this album, I picked songs like “Bye Bye Brasil” and “Sobre Todas Essas Coisas” that I felt made sense as instrumental pieces.”
That said, Zanella also asked his daughter, vocalist Sashana Souza Zanella, to pick three songs to sing on the album. She chose Nascimento's “Morro Velho,” Buarque’s “Joana Francesa” and a song by Nascimento and guitarist Toninho Horta, “Beijo Partido.”
Zanella, who wrote all but two of the arrangements in Rio Minas, also included an original composition, “Dan”.
For the recording session at Studio Piccolo in Montreal, Zanella called on long-standing collaborators Pierre François (piano), Rémi-Jean Leblanc (bass), and Paul Brochu (drums), as well as pianist André Dequech, trumpeter Ron Di Lauro and trombonist Muhammad Abdul Al-Khabyrr. He also enlisted his wife, Mima, to create the album art and design.
If Rio Minas sounds like a labor of love, a family affair, there’s a good reason for it.
“I fell in love with the country, and I love the people,” says Zanella. “That’s my connection with Brazilian music.”
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