Cellist
Catherine Bent tumbled off the bus, case in tow, and walked into a room full of
guitar players at Rio de Janeiro’s main choro school. She had arrived the
previous night in Rio for the first time and knew no Portuguese (yet). The
guitarists spoke no English. Somehow, they asked her to play, and somehow, she
understood. She sailed through a popular choro piece, and another, and then –
her audience still attentive – she dived into Bach. A roomful of skeptics
became a roomful of supporters, and she was whisked off to her first jam
session over feijoada and caipirinhas.
“Doors
opened for me,” Bent recalls. “I was warmly welcomed into the world of choro in
Rio. I had been there less than a month and was invited to play twice with a
famous choro band on national radio. It could have been the novelty of a woman
from outside Brazil, a cellist, who played the music. But I had also taken the
time to really learn the style and a decent body of repertoire. It made it very
easy to grow as a performer of the music.”
The Berklee
professor has kept the tense wonder of that first encounter in her playing and
composing, as her engagement with Brazil’s century-old answer to the string
band grows. On Ideal, the first recording chronicling Bent’s choro-inspired
work, she unites top-shelf Brazilian players to explore the elegant tradition
and its expressive, experimental possibilities.
“I have been
struck by the strong sense of community and sharing in Brazil,” Bent notes. “It
was intense, the experiences I had in that community, and it required a certain
surrender and trust. The kind of trust takes you to other places.”
“Until my
20s, I generally had a color-inside-the-lines approach to music,” recalls Bent.
“Then I got into punk and avant-garde approaches and did a lot of free improv
and experimental work in New York City, even before starting my more
disciplined study of jazz. That was also the time when I started developing my
techniques for groove-based music on cello.”
These
techniques drew her to musical styles that could make full use of strings, but
that were not necessarily designed for her instrument, styles like choro. Choro
developed in the late 19th century and came into its own in the 1920s and
1930s, an offshoot of European social dance music and Brazil’s unique mix of
African and indigenous elements. (Bent paints a picture of its early evolution
from polka to maxixe on “Quebrando Tudo.”) Choro kept the elegance of dances
like the waltz or the schottische, yet transformed them with rhythmic and
melodic variation, and a swing and sensuality all its own. Pieces often
captured everyday moments or paid tribute to homelands their composers had left
behind.
Bent first
ran into choro as a grad student at the New England Conservatory, while getting
her masters in jazz. “l met a flute player, half Israeli and half Brazilian. He
brought a book of Pixinguinha to our playing session,” Bent remembers. “I
thought at first: this is really challenging. It wasn’t written for cello. It
had melodic appeal and a groove and improvisation. I took it on as a vehicle
for growth.” Choro soon went from interesting exercise to intense fascination.
The
fascination took her to Brazil, where spontaneous musical relationship arose
and Bent marveled at the strange ease. It proved inspiring: “Really deep
friendships started, creating more community around music than I’d felt
before,” marvels Bent. “We didn’t even need to share a spoken language at
first. It was just the music and open-eyed trust.” Bent pays tribute to this experience
of opening and embracing with “Mãos Abertas,” referring to the open-handed way her
new friends shared their music and lives.
After
several summers in Brazil, having gained further mastery of the music and the
language, Bent was hearing choro pieces in her head, often at the least
convenient times, like when packing to leave for two months in Rio. Her first
composed choro, “Fazendo as Malas,” came to her amid half-packed suitcases. She
found herself rushing to the piano to jot down a few more lines, a couple more
ideas.
Like choro
itself, Bent’s pieces often incorporate sounds and styles from around Brazil,
elements of the music’s history and potential. Forró and other northeastern
Brazilian rhythms inspired “Som do Seilerei,” a musically layered send-up of a
disastrous yet funny soundcheck. Free jazz breaks, sinuous woodwinds (Bia
Stutz’s elegant clarinet), and unexpected and delightful dialog between brass
(the prodigy Moraes brothers) and cello all add twists to choro that expand the
style without fully departing from it.
These ideas
flowed in part from Bent’s profound gratitude for the lessons and gifts the
choro community had given her. “I felt the need to start contributing. People
get happy when I play, but I was enjoying hospitality, the gift of the music,
without giving much of myself back,” muses Bent. “And I needed to go deeper, to
be part of the conversation more. But because I write complex pieces that
depart from traditional forms, my music isn’t practical for a choro session
where most are learning by ear. Some people have already asked for my charts,
and I hope the recording will help make the tunes approachable to play.”
To record,
Bent turned to her most admired choro colleagues to join her in the studio.
Close friend and sax player Daniela Spielmann was someone she knew had to be
involved. And Bent invited guitarist Lucas Porto who, as she knew from jam
sessions, was a master of both the nylon 6-string and the steel 7-string styles
integral to choro.
Bent
realizes that she’s tinkering with beloved traditions, but that’s a part of
choro’s history, too. Witness the late 19th-century renegade composer, pianist,
and social activist Francisca Edwige Neves "Chiquinha" Gonzaga, who
left a comfortable middle-class marriage to pursue her music and unfashionable
human rights causes. Bent pays tribute to her life and draws on her defiant
creative spirit on “A Boa Filha Partiu.” “The most traditional players are not
always into what I’m doing, though I respect their intentions,” Bent explains.
“Over recent years, I’ve come to see that I don’t have to be a ‘good girl,’ in
art or in life. While the respect is there, so is the playfulness. I want to be
free and do things that are risky, things that are a bit quirky.”
Even if
Bent’s iterations of choro and other Brazilian forms push the boundaries, her
zest and commitment to taking joy in artistic risk feel part of a long line of
playful innovators. “Choro brought back that fearless pursuit of joy for me,
the heart of music,” says Bent. “You have to leave a light personal footprint
in classical music and think foremost about the composer’s intent. Choro works
differently. Mistakes in choro make people laugh. You might get lost or jump
into another tune and find an interesting way back. It brought me so much
freedom as a musician. It’s how I found my voice.”
