Brazil Logs

Marilynn has sent home email logs with pictures on several of her trips to Brazil. They are collected here as a resource for those thinking of traveling to Rio to explore the world of Choro, and also for those who love a good travelogue with photos.
Here’s what we have:

March 2005:

This is Marilynn’s first trip to Rio, to perform w/ the Rio Trio and just get the lay of the land. It’s a long-held dream to live in Rio, and this 10-day trip serves as a reconnaissance mission, to see if it might be possible for a dream to become a reality.

February – May, 2007:

This is Marilynn’s 2nd trip to Rio and her first extended stay. These first logs describe the Choro scene in Rio, the city itself, and the culture that would soon become a second home. Thumbnails of most of the pictures she originally sent home with each of the email logs are included, as space allows.
Week 1 , 2/27 – 3/6: first impressions…
Weeks 2 & 3 , 3/7-18: EPM & lessons w/ Joel begin; 1st concert, Espirito do Chopp…
Week 4, 3/19-27: tours with Henrique, first roda, the band begins…
Weeks 5 & 6, 3/27-4/9: Rio Scenarium, Edson Folk Museum, Nate, Maracana, Guinga
Week 7, 4/10-19: concerts, Betty, Jardim Botanico, Petropolis;
Weeks 8 & 9, 4/20 – 5/1: Choro Festival, more music…
Weeks 10 & 11, 5/2-12: Brinsley & Alex;, more music…
The last log for this trip, for the last 2 weeks of May, was never written. But I do remember sitting on the plane wondering if I would ever return, and if I did if it would ever be the same. I remember thinking that if this was a movie I’d pull off my seatbelt and race from the plane straight into the arms of my band, running to stop me. But it wasn’t, and so I flew home. And sometime around the 4th of July I realized I had reacclimated. The next week I bought a ticket back.

August, 2007:

Marilynn returns to Rio, to find out if the dream can continue.
August 15: the miraculous 1st day back, Joel @ Trapiche.
August 18: back to Choro School
August 22: 1st roda @ Sao Salvador, band party in Mage, Trapiche
August 27: Cecilia Mirelles concert, Choro School, Sao Salvador
August 31: Biblioteca, Brasilerinho, Trapiche, Joel, Paulo
September 3: last EPM (Choro School) & roda

January 2008:

On Marilynn’s 3rd trip to Rio her Mac was in the repair shop & the loaner PC wasn’t accepting pictures. So there were no blogs-w/ pics. But there were group emails home and they’re here w/ some pics she took attached. The trip includes New Year’s Eve, playing in a pro roda w/ Joel, Romulo’s birthday roda, back to Sao Salvador…

March – April, 2008:

Marilynn’s first experiment teaching her RWU courses as hybrids– beginning in the classroom in Bristol, moving online for 5 weeks so she could teach from Rio, and returning to finish the semester back in the classroom. It meant alot less time for the city, but there were still rodas in the evenings and weekends. So it was like being a working Carioca. Here’s the story…
March 14-23: EPM, Sao Salvador, find Miriam’s, Joel concert, Sueli, Trapiche, Agua
March 24-30: sick, rain, Luiz’ roda, teach online, Casuarina, Joel, EPM, Sao Salvador
March 31-April 6: Maizie y o Maestro y musica…
April 7-18: classical roda, rain, testing, Paulo, Marcilio
April 14-20: teaching, writing, recording, Joel, the Hippie Fair, Epoca de Ouro
April 21-27: Agua, Saara, movie music, Maestro, last EPM

June – July, 2008:

Back to the USA for just a couple of months to finish the semester, and then Marilynn was back in Rio to record, play, study. It seems that the Cuidade Marvilhosa becoming a second home!
June 12-20: EPM, Joel, Paulo, recording w/ Agua, rodas
June 21-29: EPM, Valle, Messias, more recording, Edu @ CCC
first half of July: concert w/ Paulo, cake, rodas, Joel, recording
end of July: Hamilton, Is & D, rodas, Joel, mastering Agua CD, nordest fair, Rio Trio, copyrighting my choro, home

Yes, I’m a few weeks late, but some of you have been asking me to finish the story of this trip to my beloved Rio. And I’m up here teaching in Maine and have seen practically none of you since my return anyway, so here goes. This part of my story frequently involves my friends Isabel & Dagmar, who you may remember arrived in Rio at the end of my last log. We had a lot of fun, but they did have some unfortunate misadventures as well at the end of their stay that delayed their departure. To preserve their privacy I will skip over details of the situation. And before I begin I want y’all to know that they did finally get home to Boston safe and sound, and Dagmar is on the mend.

When I left you last time I was standing in the sun on a Sunday outside the Bar do Mineiro in Santa Teresa waiting for what would turn out to be a wonderful feijoada w/ Romulo & Mariana & another friend. The following day featured a mandolin highlight of the trip— a CD release concert by the wondrous bandolimist Hamilton de Hollande @ Modern Sound, a CD store that turns bar/club in the evenings. (Note: his name is pronounced ah-MIL-tone gee oh-LAHN-ja. I especially put this in for my brother Ian who hasn’t really forgiven me for the fact that I am, phonetically-speaking, playing HO-dahs in HEE-oo with HO-moh-loh, rather than roda in Rio with Romulo…but I digress…).

Isabel has put in a reservation for us earlier in the day, and I intend to arrive about a half hour ahead of time to save us good seats, as I’ve never seen Hamilton in a small club before. But as I am practicing, so as not to feel too bad while witnessing the bando-boy’s awesomeness, I hear TaxiPaulo’s beep, so I wave out the window, grab my stuff and run down the 4 flights to the street. He’s just in the neighborhood & stopping by to say hi and give me some butterfly earrings he has got for me. They are only to be worn one at a time, but are still so beyond-cute that I have to just smile at his sweetness. I will be seeing/meeting fellow musicians at this concert & no one would take me seriously wearing an earring like that, so I hook one onto the neck of my T-shirt with thanks and a smile.

TP is going to Ipanema so he offers to drop me at the club & we have time for a juice & sanduiche @ BigBi first, & I’m still way early. The door-woman insists that Isabel’s reservation doesn’t gain us access to the table area, so I grab us central stools in the outskirts & settle in to wait. & before Is&D get there, Marcus & Michel— the teens from my band— arrive with Michel’s gfriend & I can’t have them sitting at the back, so we wedge some more stools in. The regular bandolimist from the Tuesday roda arrives & I meet his wife & co-workers & he sits down across the aisle. Is&D arrive & we are really squashed in, but some seats open up in front of us that I scoot the boys toward, and just before Hamilton comes on the door-lady comes by & asks if Is, D & I would like to move up to one side of a table in the front, so we get chairs w/ backs after all. & a great view of Hamilton.

He’s playing w/ bass, guitar & drums/percussion & is as amazing as predicted. I take a couple of films of him playing & some blurry pics, the best of which is attached. My pics of Is&D are too dark, because I don’t want to use flash in the faces of the rest of the audience, many of whom are stellar musicians in their own right. The show is more bebop than choro and more rock than anything else. Hamilton is a phenom, and his playing is jaw-droppingly impressive. But I don’t buy the CD because the music doesn’t really resonate w/ me, although we have a lot of fun watching, eating snacks, and explaining the music to our Rio tablemates who have no idea what they will be seeing. Afterwards I see a kid from my bandolim class & meet his older brother & TP arrives, since I asked him to pick me up. Normally I would have just grabbed a cab outside the club, but it’s nice to have a friend to drive me home. Is&D are staying at a hotel around the corner so they chat w/ TP a bit & leave to walk home.

Tuesday I’m meeting Paulo Sa @ the Villa Lobos School so we can record my choro, Siga em Frente (Go Straight Ahead), in the version we played at our concert at the Conservatory a couple of weeks ago, because that recording was too distant and I haven’t ever got a good recording of that piece yet. (sentence long enough for ya?) Unfortunately I have replaced the batteries in my recorder with some from the spent pile by mistake so it’s dead, but we have fun playing anyway and will record it same time next week when we meet to work on our book project. He’s on a tight schedule today because he just got a couple of unexpected gigs & has rehearsals, but we have a cafezinho before parting at Carioca Station.

Then it’s home for a quick turn-around and back on public trans to go to Luiz’ roda. It’s a good one, and Valle, the 7-chord player, wants to play “Evocacao” w/ me again, so we do and enjoy it, even though it’s loud in the bar. I’m pleased he asked, and that this is becoming one of the songs I’m known for, along w/ Santa Morena & Diabinho Maluco. I feel really at home @ this roda now. The waiter smiles & greets me when I arrive, and asks if I want a capirinha soon after we start playing. The regulars know me & there are always some of the Rio ladies there who grab my arm afterwards to ask or tell me things, and they’re always surprised when my accent announces that I am from somewhere else. It pleases me that my playing doesn’t. Romulo always plays there, and Ana, and Luiz, and usually Casio, although he is missing tonight, and Alfredo on pandeiro. It’s a regular part of my week now.

Wednesday is my lesson w/ Joel, and Isabel is going, to meet him & hang out. Of course I know going into it that Joel will spend most of the time lecturing her on his theory of choro, but I’m in a mood to share. She is supposed to arrive for lunch, but doesn’t and I sit on the wall across from the Internet cafe scanning every bus that arrives. It turns out that she called but my phone is not receiving calls— a service provider problem— and she is delayed & then gets off the bus too soon, and when she does arrive it’s too late to eat so TP pulls in at a corner shop & we grab some bad sanduiche & guarana (Brazilian soda, not an exotic lizard or plant) on the way. The lesson is fun— Joel is glad to have a new audience for his stories, and when TP comes back to pick us up we take lots of pics. Afterwards we get something good to eat & walk to Praia Vermelha in hopes of seeing the music session that everyone has told me happens there, and has been confirmed by Isabel’s guidebook & the man in the news stand. But they are all wrong, so we sit on the wall & talk until she catches a bus for home. We plan to meet Saturday to go to the nordest fair.

Thursday is the last day before we master the Agua CD, and Romulo calls to say that Pablo is in melt-down and hasn’t finished the mixes yet and is freaking out. So R is going to drive up to Mage after work, and a roda he has been asked to sub for, to help him finish. He’ll arrive there about 10:30 PM, when Pablo will get home from work, & they’ll be up all night if necessary & then he’ll drive back to Rio with the final mixes & go to work himself. I offer to come along to keep him awake, but he says he’ll be fine. It’s a lovely day & Is&D are off seeing some sights so I go to the beach at Ipanema & lie in the glorious sun for a couple of hours, and then hang out w/ Miriam & Sergio in the evening.

Friday morning R calls. He has to drop the CD of the mixes (finished— yea!!) off w/ Marcelo so they can be loaded up when we arrive, and then he wants to meet me downtown to hang out, because he can’t sleep, but is too wiped out to work, so we may as well do a couple of the things we’d been planning, like go to an interesting bookstore he has told me about & I can show him where I get the early choro scores at the National library. So I hop on the bus to the metro. The boy is punchdrunk tired, we can hardly find each other at the metro station his directions are so uncharacteristically bad. & R says that Pablo is so burnt he isn’t even coming in to the mastering session tonight, so it’ll be up to me to communicate w/ the Marcelos & get our CD sound. I buy R&Mariana a guidebook to Paris in the bookstore— they are going to Europe for the first time in September, but the library has just closed when we get there. So we head to my place to burn a CD of pics & music R wants & he drowses in my chair listening to my favorite CD of the Brahms Intermezzos. Then we grab some dinner & head to the studio.

A 2nd Marcelo has joined #1: he’s the mastering guy. At first he tries to adjust things to match our CD sound to the CD that R has brought of our “ideal” sound. But when he asks me which track I like best— mastered or unmastered— and I make the wrong choice, he says it’s not going to work. The “best” CD has no mandolin, no electric guitar, and the only instrument R really wanted to match is the pandeiro. It’s a much lighter CD too, so trying to match it we are losing our sound. I like Marcelo2— he seems smart and reacts well to suggestions, and seems to understand even my English. So we just set out to make our own sound. This isn’t new to me, as I have had to do that at the start of many of my own CDs. We arrive at a good sound for the first track & start the others there, tweaking them a bit for instrumentation. In our 4 hours we manage to do half of the CD. Home @ 1:30 AM— a night well spent.

Saturday we’ll finish mastering @ 4:00, but before that TP is driving Is&D and me to the all-week-end, every-weekend fair of northeast Brazilian food/culture/music in a northern suburb of Rio. We all meet @ Praia Vermelha @ noon for the drive up. When we get to the fair TP checks his watch & says he can stay for a couple of hours with us & have some “fun” (which, although English, is pronounced “FOO-nee”) so we all go in. Is loves the accordion-based bands— she & TP dance & then she & I do. It’s a cool place to walk around, and eat, and buy crafts and take pictures, and Is&D are having a blast. We eat a typical nordest meal, that involves a plate of major meat piled on vegetables. TP leaves @ 2:30, promising to meet me at the studio— R has asked him to please come & help us w/ his recording-engineer ears.

I leave Is&D still having fun to catch a cab w/ a v.dumb driver @ 3:00. He takes a v.circuitous & time-consuming route to the studio, maybe because he doesn’t know Sta Teresa, or maybe because he is a cheat, but I end up arriving late, and R calls worried. Pablo is caught in traffic so we go ahead w/out him. He arrives an hour later looking better than expected, and TP comes in a few minutes after that. I’ve still got my camera from the fair, & TP says I have to film the “making of” video. So I get Pablo to talk and switch around as everyone joins in. Funny. And we finish mastering and I’m really happy to see how happy Pablo & R are with the result, as they have worked so hard on this project. R pulls up the draft of the cover on Marcelo’s computer for everyone to see and we adjust some text. Tomorrow we’ll finish the cover too, with Bernard after the Sao Salvador roda.

Sunday is my last roda @ Sao Salvador, as I’m going to Petropolis next Sunday, and will be back in La Prov the one after that. Isabel & Dagmar come & Is plays for awhile w/ my mandolin while I shoot pics of her first Rio roda (I guess all on her camera as I can’t find them to attach one). It’s Ishmael the blind drummer’s birthday and his aunt has brought 2 big cakes. (yes, the cake continues…) They both have the sheet music for Benguele printed on the frosting somehow. One is delicious chocolate, and the other, which is called a “bolo (cake) Americano,” is a giant 5-layer tuna salad sandwich! It’s pointless to try to protest that we Americans do not have tuna salad cake… (reminds me of my amusement finding  packets of the mix for “Rhode Island” sauce in a grocery store in Sweden.)

I buy my last “berries caipirinha” from the portable bar/CD shop & we go off to lunch w/ R&M, Bernard & a bunch of friends, including Casio. Casio apologizes for being late and missing most of my last roda, but I make him promise to come to Luiz’ on Tuesday. Dagmar is feeling under the weather so she goes home instead, & Is leaves after lunch. I’m planning to meet her & Dagmar to go club-hopping in Lapa on Monday night, as they are going back to the US on Wednesday.  After lunch the Agua crew goes to Bernard’s to finish the last changes and additions to the CD text. And then there it is, on a CD in my hand. And later that night, far from being exhausted, my brain hands me the key to organizing the choro book Paulo Sa & I are planning. Amazing how clarity can suddenly appear with no warning and when least expected. If you’d like a preview of the Agua CD you can see the cover & hear a couple of tunes here: <http://www.myspace.com/aguanofeijao>

Monday I meet Paulo “no centro” & we successfully record Siga & finish fleshing out the book. He loves my brain-storm ideas & adds some things to the table of contents and we assign ourselves various jobs to do before I see him in the US at the end of September, when we will hopefully start putting the pieces in place. On my way home I get a call from Isabel that Dagmar has suddenly become really sick and they’ve been to a doctor & have some medicine but won’t be going out tonight. So I’ll call in the morning to see what they want to do for their last day. When I arrive back @ Miriam’s, her son Sergio is packing to leave to go to Rio Grande Sul, way in the south of Brazil, where he has found a girlfriend and is cheerily planning a new life. We toast him w/ lemon liquor, all we have in the house, and watch/help him pack up to leave early.

Tuesday morning early I get a call from Is, who is w/ Dagmar in the emergency room. I go right over to the hospital, in Botofogo, to be with them. It’s all kind of confusing and scary, but the new doctor, recommended by the Consulate, seems very good. They eventually decide to admit her and say she will not be able to fly for a few days so they will have to reschedule their flight. I call R to ask him to apologize to Luiz, and miss the roda, and stay late. Is stays at the hospital all night, and actually will until they leave to go home.  Somewhere around midnight, after arriving home, I get a call from Casio— I had forgotten that I had especially asked him to be at the roda so we could play together. So I give my apologies and say I will be there next Tuesday, my last in Rio for this trip.

Wednesday morning, when I call, things seem to be going better at the hospital, so I will go to my lesson w/ Joel as planned, and call TP to ask him to pick me up @ the hospital instead of in Urca. When he finds out why, his response is— why didn’t you call me sooner! And he is already at the hospital to visit when I arrive. The Brazilians in this soon-to-be hospital saga will be the amazing bright spot. The man from their hotel who puts on a suit and comes to visit; the doctor who calls Blue Cross in the US several times to explain the situation so the bills will be covered; the nurses who are in the room seconds after a buzzer is pushed, and share stories of their lives and bring CDs of their favorite music as parting gifts for Is&D; the people on the phone at the Consulate and the airline who say they are all so happy when they hear D has improved. But we’re not there yet. We are now @ Joel’s where he spends hours on improving my ornaments, the every nuance of glides and trills, and then takes out a huge stack of manuscript copies that we play through & make a pile of the best ones for me to copy. Some of these manuscripts have “copied from a manuscript of Jacob” written at the bottom, or “written for Isaias & copied from the manuscript in 1979”. Pretty heady stuff for a gringa! I am beat but happy when I arrive home.

When I call the hospital Thursday there are more worries and more tests, so I am there all day to lend support and help Is figure out all the Portugese. But Thursday overnight things improve, and Friday morning when I call there is relief in Isabel’s voice. They can’t leave Saturday, but Monday for sure. I am still at the hospital most of the day, but go to hear Paulo Sa play bandolim w/ an orchestra in the evening @ Cecilia Mirelles Hall, and inadvertently discover the cheapest drinking in town. I catch a cab from the hospital & arrive at the hall about an hour ahead of time as I don’t have a ticket. I remember that they have discount tickets for music students, so flash my EPM student card & get in for R$2, about $1.30. I get past the ticket-taker, buy a program and am in the lobby waiting for the doors to open, when a passing waiter offers me a glass of champagne from his tray. I refuse the first time, but say yes to the 2^nd waiter and ask the cost. Well, it’s free. When another waiter collects my empty glass, he asks, “um mais?” (one more?) and so I waft up to my balcony seat a half hour later basking in the glow of 5 or 6 glasses of free champagne. My favorite girl bandolim student from EPM is there w/ 2 boys & we chat a bit. The concert is good, especially the modern piece Paulo is playing in, and he sounds great. I call his cell at the end & we meet out front, where I have run into guitarist-Marcia, and chat for a few minutes. I’m going to Petropolis Sunday & he’ll email me the bus schedule. Home w/ a taxi driver who looks like the Rio Johnny Rotten.

Saturday I call the hospital & all is well, so I meet R & Mariana for lunch in Ipanema, stopping on the way in Copacabana to buy Is&D a duffle bag for all their extra stuff. It’s nice just to hang out w/ R&M with no CD-related activities. They are excited about their September trip to Munich & Paris— the Munich part work-related for Romulo, and the Paris part to visit a friend, and we talk about that and the new roda that R is planning to start on Sunday afternoons in Catete park, with basically Agua and a few other friends. R has his car so they drop me back at my place. I’ve decided I will go to the Elizeth Cardosa musical tonight, after postponing my planned trip there on Thursday, so change and head out to the hospital to find Dagmar much improved. TP meets me there & drops me at the theater for the show, that includes my friend Marcilio on bandolim in the band. The music is so great! It’s a show about the life of one of the greatest Brazilian singers, featuring 5 women & 2 men who all sing her songs as they enact scenes from her life. The theater is in a scary corner of centro, but the audience is full of dapper couples & little old ladies, so that reassures me, and I catch a cab right out front, rather than walk to the metro, and arrive home without mishap.

Sunday I’m up early to catch the bus to Petropolis. Henrique picks me up & I have coffee w/ him & Patricia at their house and we chat. We stop at a restaurant near their house for lunch, and then drop Patricia at the lab & continue on to the Imperial Museum where the Rio Trio is playing today. Paulo is there and Marcus Ferrer, who is playing the delightful violao caipira with the group today instead of his usual guitar. It’s the same type of instrument that Messias plays— he of the movie debut earlier in the trip— but in Marcus’ hands the instrument sounds more harp-like, and they are playing an elegant European program for this “300^th Anniversary of the Portuguese Court” series.

They are playing on the “upper deck” of a room transformed into a ship’s interior, and when I climb up w/ them to listen I get a surprise, as Paulo has a brand new bandolim by his maker/friend in Minas for me to try. It’s really good & I play along w/ the boys— improvising at first and then reading in a later set. I wish there was more time or an opportunity to try the instrument for a couple of days, because this could be “the one”. But, alas, I won’t see Paulo again this trip so would have to decide to buy this right now, and that can’t be done. So I regretfully return it to him when the gig is through.

Paulo’s wife, also Patricia, has brought their children down from Itaipaiva to see me. Mariana is 13 and has passed into a beautiful gracefulness, Miguel is still a feisty boy, and baby Vincenze is walking & talking. We stand for awhile in the lovely sunlight in the museum courtyard and talk. The weather is quite like our spring, this winter in Petropolis, and the flowers are closer to those at home. We’re at a higher altitude than Rio so it’s always a bit cooler here. It’s nice to stand and talk as Miguel pretends to chase Vincenze who looks back over his shoulder and laughs gleefully as he baby-runs.

Eventually we part company, leaving just Henrique, Paulo & me to get some dinner, and then Paulo takes me to catch the bus home. When I arrive @ the Rodaviaria in Rio it’s a crazy scene. It’s the last day of a 2-week school winter vacation and the line for the “approved” taxis is so long I can’t see the end. & the other taxis are absolutely not an option because this is a really bad neighborhood, and the possibility of a set-up robbery or ransom is real. So I call TaxiPaulo who arrives to my rescue in about 10 minutes & takes me home.

Monday I finish a grant application in the morning & go to the hospital to help Is&D pack. D looks so much better. They say good-bye to the many people who have gone so out of their way to make this dire situation as easy as possible, and did it without making it seem like their effort was out of the ordinary. There’s a pic of Is&D w/ Val—the nurse from a samba family who during Carnival works her 12-hour shift, goes dancing for 12 hours, and then is back on the job for the next 12 hours. We all love Brazilians an extra lot today. TP picks us up w/ all the stuff & I run to find a wheelchair when we get to the airport. Their bags are checked & we are waving good-bye in no time, and they make it home in good order. And when I get home I need to pack as well, as tomorrow is my last full day here.

And a very full day it is. In the morning I go to Lapa to officially register my 2 choro & 1 valse for Brazilian copyright. R said I should do this since we have recorded one of them so a lot of people will hear it. I find the right room, filled with men of all ages— no women composers this day— who are registering sambas, rock, forro, and after deciphering the Portuguese I begin the process. It’s very low-tech, involving filling out forms 2 times for each song, making 2-sided copies of the music scores, taking an amount-owed slip to a nearby bank to pay, and returning with proof of payment to get a certificate for each piece w/ its registration number. Of course it takes longer than expected  & TP finds me there still waiting when he comes to pick me up for my last lesson w/ Joel.

At Joel’s I return all the pieces he has lent me to copy, play a lot, and get some last corrections and words of advice. I also play the Agua CD for him, although I’m pretty sure he won’t like it. His comments are “muito barrulo” (too much noise) which is part of the delight of AnF, but must be hard to decipher w/ a hearing aid, and “not enough of you.” But as it isn’t a solo CD or even a feature CD I just take that as a compliment. And he does like the calmest piece on the CD, the valse that Mariana & I play on flute & mandolin. TP drops me at home for a quick change of gear, and while I’m there I get a travel advisory from Orbitz that there will be a Brazilian national airport workers’ strike starting @ midnight. Oh, great— I’m flying out of 2 of them— here and in Sao Paulo!

But for now I’m off to my last Tuesday roda. And I’ve invited Andreas, a post-student from Berlin & Miriam’s latest tenant, to come. He’s doing an internship in a German school as a math teacher and will be in Rio for a few months, so I want him to meet R&M, and he wants to hear choro too. And I figure being from Berlin and about the same age, he’ll probably meet Nate one day. The roda is fun, although it’s hard to leave, and afterwards Andreas, on his bike, actually beats us home in R’s car. I say good-bye to Mariana last of all, and she gives me a big hug and her radiant smile and says, “I’m so glad I know someone like you.” I’ve been thinking that all day as I have been saying good-bye to my friends here one by one.

Wednesday morning I finish packing, eat lunch, TP drops by to say good-bye with a CD of music for me & I give him one of pictures and recordings he wants. R picks me up a bit early because of the airport strike, but, other than waiting a half hour for them to open the check-in counter at Continental, my flights are problem-free, and so I arrive home. When I will return to Rio is, this time, up for speculation. My Brazilian friends insist there is no way I’ll hold out until January, but I can’t see any other option. So here I sit in Maine, shepherding the Agua CD through the manufacturing process by email, and teaching gringo mandolinst about choro. Having two lives is great, but, unfortunately, it means missing part of each one. And while I was in Rio having these adventures I have missed all of you! & I hope to see you soon. In the meantime, enjoy the pics, and write me!!

xo
m

Oi queridos~ It’s been awhile, for various reasons good & bad, but not to worry, I have heeded the call of your emails & I am back w/ more adventures of the girl bandolimist in Rio. It is July now, & the 2nd was my “surprise” concert w/ Paulo Sa @ the Conservatorio Brasileiro– classical music for 2 bandolims. He forgot to tell me about it before I left home, but we have managed to put together a good program of original mandolin duets in no time at all. We have our second & last rehearsal Tuesday the 1st & stop in to look @ the hall, a fairly elegant mini-auditorium currently holding the dress rehearsal for an end-of-the-semester student samba group.

I skip Luiz’ Tuesday-night roda to try to keep my classical chops in the front of my brain– hard to do on the bandolim. The Wednesday concert goes well & people seem to really enjoy the music. We end w/ my “Siga em Frente,” that is a fun contrast to Mozart & Leone. Afterwards Romulo & Jesse & I meet Marcia near her office in Gloria for a nordest lunch in a little inauspicious-looking place that turns out to be great, of course. R & I go back to the EPM offices w/ Marcia to put in process the paperwork to get the rights to record Mauricio’s music– one piece for Agua, and another for my group Enigmatica in the US. And it is here, while we are chatting & having a cafezinho, that I first encounter Brazilian cake.

It’s an innocent step into temptation— Marcia offers me half of her piece of white cake w/ a filling of tart maracuja (passion fruit) and sweet cream. But this is the first cake in all my trips to Rio & it flings open the magical dessert door. Somehow it’s been so hot every other time I have been here that fruit juice is as sweet as I have wanted to get. But now I am sliding down the slippery slope of where’s-my-sun-gone? winter blues, and “bolo” the airy delicious Brazilian cake grabs my hand. When early sundown & the rainy weeks of winter combine to make you one un-Brasileiro, it’s cake to the rescue.

And it’s not just me, it seems to be everywhere. The most amazing appearance is on the way home from Joel’s, when TaxiPaulo asks if I’d like to stop for a cafezinho (the little espresso-type coffee that seems to run the country). He pulls into a gas station & walks over to a beat-up pick-up truck where a man is selling coffee, a marbleized bolo that melts in my mouth, and quindim– my first, a denser variation on flan, (and actual flan is “pudim” as I will discover later on my tour of desserts). It is so good that I am threatening to write a piece of music about it– “Quindim no Bonsucesso”– the neighborhood we were driving through. And so cake enters my life in Rio, along with mango mousse, and cuzcus– a fluffy slice of tapioca & coconut heaven– and guava-newtons, and lime pie.

I’m usually not a really big fan of desserts, but I have fallen completely. & if I come home the same size I left it will have nothing to do w/ willpower, but will be because of the most efficacious exercise program known to man- public transportation. I really think that obesity in the western world must date from the moment cars became ubiquitous. Buses & metros require so much walking, climbing hills, stairs to reach them & to get where one is going. & are sometimes so maddening that one would really rather walk miles then wait another minute. I am not a person who regards exercise as an enjoyable end in itself, but here in Rio I walk miles and never even think about it. And so far it seems, from the fit of my clothes, that public trans may just save me from my close encounters with cake. (Just succumbed to a Mil Folhas- cake of 1000 layers- in Petropolis, but I digress…)

The reason R & I are hanging w/ Marcia & Samantha this afternoon is that we have to get Cassio to the studio in the evening to record the last overdub for our CD. And with public trans, it is easier and more fun to hang than to go home and start out again. So we pick up C & his clarinet @ Praca Sao Salvador a couple of hours later & catch a cab to Sta. Teresa, to Marcelo’s studio. We have recorded our whole CD @ Pablo’s house in Mage, but Marcelo offered to record Cassio when we went to met w/ him about mastering last week, and it seems the easiest way to get this final track done. It all goes smoothly & Pablo arrives near the end to pick up the completed tune to take back w/ him. He’ll be doing the final mixes over the next 2 weeks, and then we will master the CD. I’m figuring out tune order, Bernard is working on the cover design, and everything should be done so I can take it all with me when I leave, as I am getting the CDs pressed in the US. [Those of you who want a preview, the cover & some tunes are now up on Agua’s website, http://www.myspace.com/aguanofeijao]

Well it’s now much later. Life intervened again and this email has been languishing. I added a couple of updates above & I’ve had the photos all picked out, so I’ll skim ahead as far as I can before I need to leave for my last full day’s packed schedule. & I’ll finish up w/ a 4th log after I get home, Thursday.

Miriam is sick all week with a winter cold & complications, so on Saturday, before EPM, I go to pick up her order @ the RedeEcological food coop. It’s interesting to see how they work, and who knew there were so many types of potatoes! I make 2 trips to get all the food home, and then it’s off to the last EPM of the semester. It’s only apresentacaoes by the various classes (bandolims don’t have one) & the last Bandao. But it’s fun to play the tunes one more time & talk to my friends, including Luiz Barcelos who is back to visit for a day & comes over to say he heard my band on our Myspace page & liked it. Marcia takes some pics of me playing @ Bandao & I record the whole thing for posterity. Afterwards I go hang out at Bar Urca & eat their great fish soup w/ Luiz etc.

The next day is Sunday roda @ Sao Salvador & it is totally amazing. I play so well that the pandeiro section all look at me amazed after “Santa Morena” (which was too fast for almost all of them) & say “parabems!” (congratulations). Maybe it was the time spent on classical, maybe it’s just that I’ve broken through to a new level, but I am flying, and Cassio & I are playing so well together— counterlines, interactions on melody— that I want to take him back to the US w/ me. Romulo & Mariana meet me there afterwards & we go off to lunch w/ R’s parents @ a great kilograma place. The Brazilians have these pay-for-the-weight-of-your-plate places everywhere, from simple buffets to gourmet w/ a huge variety. This is one of the latter & I have sushi, salad etc. &, of course, delicious cake. It’s fun to hang out w/ R’s parents, especially as I’m understanding Portuguese better now.

Back @ home I get an email from Isabel & Dagmar— who are coming to spend 2+ weeks in Rio- saying that their flight was delayed so they will come a day late. So I reschedule TaxiP, & Monday, suddenly free, I go to the beach @ Apoador & lie there in the warm winter sun, although the water is too cold to swim. I stroll, eat lunch at one of my favorite places &, sunblind, take some pics on the wrong setting of my camera—so now I have a lot of 6 second movies that you will never get to see.

Tuesday TP picks me up just before 7:00 AM (big yawn…) & we’re off to the airport to get the road-weary girls. We drop their stuff @ their hotel, get something to eat, and they come back to my place to nap until they can get into their room. It’s their first time in Brazil & it will be fun to re-live the newness of it all w/ them. Tuesday night is Luiz’ roda— muito fun! I really want to make a T-shirt that says something like “Voce precisa ter mais fun” or “Nos temos fun!” or just “Tenha fun!” for when I come back. Because I am having a lot of fun teasing Brasileiros about the lack of “fun” in their language.

Wednesday is my lesson w/ Joel— I had to miss last week because of my concert & his recordings– & afterwards I meet Is & D @ Modern Sound to hear Ronaldo play his weekly gig. I haven’t seen him yet this trip & he is his usual funny cheerful self, and plays awesomely. D&Is are settling in well & we plan to meet Friday for a concert. Alas that is not to be, as it is sold out, but Is & I do meet R&M for dinner at a little place in Botofogo (D opts out in favor of sleep) & Is & Mariana have fun talking samba.

R is majorly stressed about the progress of the CD mixes w/ the mastering deadline approaching & is on the phone to Pablo many times during the evening. I am trying to put the tunes in order anyway w/out final mixes. It’s a job I like, because it’s my theory that there is one particular way the tunes want to go, so that each one will be exactly what you want to hear after the last one. Sometimes a wrong order can make a tune sound too slow or insecure, but just re-placing it will make it sound the way you heard it when you recorded it. I have a tentative order, but am still fiddling w/ it, (and actually won’t land on my final version until next Tuesday). Saturday is no-EPM. Miriam is away so I pick up her order at Rede again, but the rest of the day appears to have disappeared from my memory.

Sunday morning I am running late for roda & nearly collide w/ the bus @ the bottom of the hill & the driver kindly stops for me, even though I’m halfway between stops. But then, alas, I just miss the metro racing down the stairs. So I plop down on a bench to wait for the next one & a guy w/ a cavaquinho over his shoulder sits down next to me & asks if I have a bandolim or a banjo, and so I meet Vivi. He’s one of the old ones & lives near the Lago do Machado metro so we chat onto the train & off & he walks me to roda. Everyone in the neighborhood knows him & he invites me to a samba/choro roda @ 3:00 in the Catete park, and also invites me to lunch at his place, but those will have to wait for another day. He doesn’t play at out roda, just sits down on a bench w/ a friend & wave good-bye.

I am late for roda, & everyone cheerfully reprimands me & someone says I have to run around the bandstand 3 times as punishment. It’s a good roda, and R&M arrive at the end & we go off to Sta T to have a traditional feijoada lunch @ Bar do Mineiro. There’s a huge line, and Mariana calls a friend who lives nearby to join us & we talk & laugh & drink beer while we wait, out in the street in the sun. and I will leave us there & send the email now, because I do have to pack to go. Enjoy the pics & I will report on the last 2 weeks when I get home, because everyone wants to know how the story ends. And I probably won’t see most of you for awhile so you can pretend I’m still writing from Rio. Although I just heard that there will be an airport workers strike starting tomorrow morning, so who knows, I may actually be.

Ate pronto!
m

I start this week’s log w/ choro school on Saturday morning- a fine place to begin. EPM (Escola Portatil da Musica) is one of the main reasons I am here in Rio. Started by Luciana Rabello and Mauricio Carrilho of Acari Records, it’s an all-day Saturday choro school with a staff that is a veritable who’s-who of contemporary choro greats in Rio. I arrive in plenty of time this week for the teaching roda @ 9:00, in fact I am one of only about 4 or 5 there w/ Alvaro Carrilho, flutist & a scion of the Carrilho dynasty in choro, who is running the class. Well, we are 5 until the doors open @ 9:30 & the masses flood in. (Is that when the cool people arrive? Or did they just all get caught chatting outside & sent in?) Still there are only a couple of soloists- tons of guitars- so I get to play 2 songs- Cochichando, that I share w/ the student flutist, and Eu Quero Sosego, that I play alone. It’s the first time I’ve got to do more than comp chords @ a teaching roda so I am relieved that it goes well.

In Bandolim2 class I play my memorized Diabinho Maluco- just forgetting a bit of the 3rd section in the pressure of the moment, and we’re to make up a counterline for next week. Only Jesse shows up for B3- even Andre is missing- guess everyone was daunted by last week’s Luperce waltz. But I get Jesse to help me fill in the blank spots in the first section, that he has learned, and Pedro obligingly plays a slow version of the whole thing for me to film. So I’ll try to have it for next week. Bandão is fun & features a chorus of students singing the Tom Jobim tune we’re doing. Afterwards I stop in for a sanduiche & acai @ Laguna Lanche on my way home to pick up my amp & music stand for the 3:00 roda @ Romulo’s.

Romulo has missed EPM (Marcia says I should tell him that it’s absolutamente injustificavel, but I think just so she can be amused by my pronunciation), but arrives @ 2:30 to pick Marcus & me up for his roda. It’s basically Agua no Feijão, but Michel can’t come so there’s a sub pandeiro, and Raphael will be late, so Luiz is coming to play guitar. It’s seems odd to me that this isn’t an AnF rehearsal- as we could use one- or a meeting about the CD. There are issues we need to discuss, not the least of which is the caricature that is supposed to be our cover. R has emailed out a copy & to my mind it’s kindof creepy, not the sort of thing that would make anyone to want to hear our music. We look somewhat like rats in a pot of beans, and Pablo- the cutest man in the world- looks especially grotesque. I’m the next worst, looking kindof like Hilary on a bad day.

But with these guys it’s music first, so we play. Pablo is in a goofy mood & at one point launches into “Hit the Road, Jack,” and the pandeiro player pulls out a harmonica & begins to wail- too funny. So I join in w/ my best Rich DelGrosso impression. My little amp works better in this enclosed space and I have fun playing some new tunes, and Mariana plays a lovely bossa nova on flute. As folks are leaving, I ask R if we are going to discuss the CD at all. Marcus has gone, but P, R & R & I do. I find myself being v.definite about what will & won’t work, in a way that I haven’t before. But CD production is much more my area of expertise & we just can’t use the caricature as is for the cover, and we have to put some text on the cover other than the band name, so gringos will have some idea what’s inside, and we can’t use a feijoada pot for the cover because noone in the US, including me, even knows what that is… But finally, in true AnF fashion, between us all & Mariana we come up w/ a really good plan & leave happy.

Sunday is São Salvador roda, but it’s threatening rain & about a half hour in begins to drizzle. We retreat to a bar but it’s cramped & noisy & a lot of folks leave. I play awhile but decide not to stay for lunch & head home in the rain. I drop my stuff & talk Miriam into going to the Garota da Urca w/ me for pizza & caipirinhas to ward off the bleak weather, and we do & have a good easy chat- in English for a change! Afterwards I practice some, write some, & try not to get the rainy Sunday blues. On Monday the weather is more of the same, but after a morning writing I take the bus to Ipanema & walk about, get money from the bank, eat lunch, find a little dictionary, buy music books @ Toca da Vinicius, catch the bus back & buy some groceries before heading up the hill for home.

I send out my first log & cook dinner listening to the great new Cristavão Bastos CD & get emails from Brinsley & Nate & my niece Ellis, making it, after all, a good day. Even though it is absolutamente pouring rain & so cold @ night that I fear I am turning into a Carioca & will need a down jacket whenever it dips below 65. Really, I did see a guy in a knee-length down parka in Ipanema today… And- an aside- as I’m typing this it’s 5:25 and the sun has already set. We’ve just passed the shortest day of the year and it’s officially winter.

Tuesday I spend much of the morning working up my classical chops for the duo concert w/ Paulo next week. It really is a different technique than playing choro, and the scale length on the bandolim is quite a bit longer than my Woodley, so there are some adjustments to make. Joel calls & says he still doesn’t know if I can have a lesson tomorrow, but he’ll find out at the recording session tonight and will call tomorrow morning. Talking to him reminds me that I need to redo the score of Isso- my waltz for Joel- to reflect what I am really playing now, rather than what I originally wrote. The rewrite totally sucks me in, and when I try to take a break for lunch I have to give up & go back to the computer because the phrases won’t stop shifting themselves around in my brain.

I finally finish & email it off to Marcilio for an OK on the chords. I grab my jacket & head down the stairs, planning to walk, but as I hit the door I hear TaxiPaulo’s honk-
have I forgotten something? Nope, but he has been to Urca three times today w/ fares & since he has an extra hour this time he decided to see if I was home. We drive down the hill & then walk over to Praia Vermelha & around the neighborhood. He talks me into coming with him for his 4:30 fare- Marcelo’s mother-in-law, who is going to a Dr. appointment. She used to be an opera singer so we chat about Verdi and Puccini. P has to wait for her appointment to be finished, so he drives me back to Urca & we have a cafezinho & he drops me back @ the corner.

When I get home Isso is waiting in my email- Marcilio has cleaned up the chords and reformatted the score so it looks much better. Wow, how nice is he! I pack up my things & head out- chatting a minute w/ Sueli on the way- to catch the bus/metro to Rua Gogol Candido for Luiz’ roda @ 7:00. & I get there just before the downpour. It is muito fun w/ Cassio, Romulo, Ana, and Albertinho on the pandeiro & toward the end we are sounding somewhat like a New Orleans Dixieland band w/ all the improvised counterlines blazing.

My favorite moment though is playing the beautiful Evocacão do Jacob w/ the 79-year-old 7-string hot-shot, Valle. We start, and Luiz calls off the troops so noone else joins in, so I’m able to put in all the rubato the piece needs, that the roda-format usually disallows, and Valle knows all the best bass lines and harmonies. Muito legal! I am also quite happy w/ my little amp here. A bit louder would be nice, but I can be heard & can hear myself. At the end of the evening R & I talk to Cassio to confirm that he will be able to record Pitoresco for us next week. & at about 10:30 I say good-bye to all & catch a cab home, as it’s too late to feel sanguine about riding the bus alone.

Well, I was wrong in the glib forecast of the weather schedule that I made last week (I am from New England so I should have known better). It’s been cold and rainy since Sunday, and Wednesday brings more of the same. Joel calls in the morning to say he can do a lesson after all, but when I call TaxiP, he’s in Buzios, but says he can pick me up @ Joel’s afterwards. So I practice my classical rep in the morning, and catch a cab to Joel’s from Urca- a nice chatty guy who actually knows where Rua Enes Filho is.

Joel greets me w/ the question- do you know O Bom Filho a Casa Torna (The Good Son Returns Home)? Well it’s practically Agua’s theme song, so I play it for him by heart. Apparently Hamilton wants to record this on their duet CD & Joel has never played it. So I am in the rare position of showing Joel something new about choro. At the lesson he works with me on ornaments for Gostozinho, and shows me some harmonies he plays on Turbilhão de Beijos. I nearly get through Diabinho Maluco by heart, and he works on my phrasing. And adds a few to the Brazilian finger-bender exercises that I’ve been collecting and inflicting on my students in the US. As the lesson is ending TPaulo calls to say he is stuck in a traffic jam in Niteroi so he won’t make it here in time to get me. But Joel is going into town to a party- his wife has already left- so we share a cab.

I drop my things @ home and head back out again to meet R&M for a concert just as the sky opens up and it starts raining as hard as I can possibly imagine. Luckily there is no wind, so my umbrella helps, but I am soaked from the knees down before I get down the hill & quickly decide that a cab to CCC is a far better idea than public transportation. I practically dive into the first one that stops, trying to avoid stepping in the torrent of water racing down the gutter. But I’m excited about the concert- Eduardo Neves (superhero of sax & flute) playing w/ several of the old Trapiche crew and the samba singer Paulo Moska tonight @ the Centro Cultural Carioca.

The weather incredibly worsens as we drive- it’s almost raining too hard to stay on the road. But I get to the club in plenty of time to snag our reserved table. (You lose your reservation if you don’t arrive an hour before the stated start time of the show.) R arrives shortly thereafter, having been at Mariana’s student samba recital, and M herself comes an hour later, after her class. The show starts (an hour and a half “late”) w/ Edu’s band- a kindof Big-Band version of Trapiche, or a new-formation Pagode Jazz Sardinhas Club. Rui is on clarinet, Rogerio Sousa on 7-string, Luiz Barcelos on bandolim, Andersen on pandeiro, and there’s also electric bass, trumpet, and a drum set. They are knock-out good. Paulo Moska takes the stage after a half-dozen songs, and is a high-energy singer with a Charlie-Chaplin-little-tramp thing going on.

The show is great, but even after a capirinha & caldinha de feijão (and how lovely and interesting that you can buy a mug of bean soup in nearly every bar in Rio) I’m still soaked & cold & sitting in front of huge windows that open out to a little balcony. Charming but chilly, and the club is nowhere warm enough to dry clothes. The show ends @ midnight, and my teeth start chattering in the cab on the way home. When I get there I put on PJs, a sweat shirt, and my one pair of wool sox, & heat up some leftovers to stave off hypothermia (well maybe I exaggerate) and the very real possibility of a cold. But in the morning I, miraculously, wake up fine. And about 10:30 AM the sun finally breaks through the 4-day streak of rain.

Thursday I’m rehearsing w/ Paulo Sa in the afternoon, so go to get copies of our music made in the morning. I get a call from Rodrigo Zaidan as I’m walking home and he wants me to stop by so he can give me a copy of his new solo piano CD, so I do. He’s rehearsing w/ a guitarist for a show that he invites me to, but it’s a time I can’t go. Nice to see him though, and “my” old apartment- where I stayed last January while he was on tour. I head downtown to the Villa Lobos School to meet Paulo & we play through our program, change a couple of pieces, and decide to meet next Tuesday for a final rehearsal before Wednesday’s show. Afterwards we hang out for a bit & get a coffee in the roof-top cantina, where he jokes w/ some of his students & gets them to play us a couple of choro.

It’s end-of-the-semester testing weeks here so everyone is cramming for theory exams and stopping by the table to ask Paulo questions, such as- should Chiquinha Gonzaga’s Gaucho should be played w/ a maxixe or polca rhythm. Paulo is playing the Vivaldi concert somewhere in Minas Gerais on Saturday as well as dealing w/ the end-of-the-semester stuff, and a 1-year-old on an erratic sleeping schedule. It makes me glad that on this visit to Rio I am actually “on holiday” from RWU and so have time to slow down and appreciate being here. On my way home I stop in at a juice stand & catch the end of the Germany/Turkey soccer match on the TV, and watch Germany win- wonder how this looks to Nate in Berlin, probably watching the same game at the same time. So the final match will be Germany/Spain on Sunday. I’m up late working on my music for Saturday’s EPM.

Friday I go shopping for shoes that are not sandals- all the rain has me longing to cover my feet up, and anyway I can’t give a concert next Wednesday in the shoes I’ve brought- and I find some suitable flats @ Rio Sul. In the evening it’s the premiere of Cecelia Lang’s film about Messias. Cecelia is Miriam’s daughter, and I’ve helped a bit w/ translation for the project & have heard Messias play, so I am really looking forward to seeing the film. The opening is at the Parque das Ruinas- a v.cool spot in Santa Teresa. It was a derelict mansion that the neighborhood decided should be made into a public space. But instead of turning it back into a mansion, they fixed it up but left it open, and it’s an interesting maze of pathways, stairs, & vistas. There’s an open-air bar on the roof and, as I discover wandering around the spotlit wonderland, a snug auditorium in the basement where the film will be shown.

I meet Miriam there, arriving an hour “late” for the pre-movie music, but having learned about Rio I am not surprised to find that the musicians are just starting their sound check. Messias is center stage, of course, a dapper black man in a white suit, with white hair and a stunningly gorgeous smile. He plays the viola capira- a small guitar w/ an open tuning and a harp-like sound that I love. He also sings, writes songs, paints, drinks too much cachaca, and loves life. Cecelia’s film is superb- beautiful and poetic, and really captures his philosophical essense. & the reception is fun- drinking wine on the rooftop, chatting in portugues w/ friends of Miriam & also my former bandmate Carlos & his gf Adriana who live in StaT- but there is no food & we are all starved. So after seeing the film a second time M & I & a friend head out w/ Maize & Tom & her granddaughter Iara- there are 6 of us in the car- to have some dinner at a restaurant in StaT. Home @ midnight, under a beautiful star-lit sky.

Saturday is the longest day in the world. I’m up @ 6:00 & at Praia Vermelha by 7:00 to meet Romulo, Mariana, & Bernard- a friend of R’s & a flutist who is designing our CD cover. Mariana is taking the CD cover photo- instruments w/ a backdrop of sand, sea, and mountains. Idyllic, but of course in real life our concept is complicated by vendors setting up canopies and coolers, and the beach patrol setting out “Perigoso” signs & joggers and bike-riders. But M manages to get the pics and we grab breakfast, and then she & Bernard head out as R & I head over to UniRio for EPM.

The 9:00 roda is skeletal– 2 pandeiros, a beginning bandolimist, and a rhythmically-challenged guitarist (yes, even in Brazil…) but I play Receita da Samba & Diabinho Malucos & then go to my 2 bandolim classes. As I am walking out to Bandão w/ my chair I see R & Marcus & Raphael & remember- no Bandão for me today, we are off to Magé to finish recording our CD. So we load up, drive the hour north, meet Pablo for lunch @ a self-serve in town, and then settle in to get the work done.

We record my Por Que Não?, working from Michel’s recorded pandeiro track. Then Raphael has to put down some counterpoint bass lines & redo a solo. It’s often tedious work, but everyone has fun & is funny throughout- which is why I love these guys so much. No attitude, ego trips, melt-downs, we just enjoy playing music together. At the end we talk to Pablo & adjust some of the mixes—maybe a bit less cavaquinho here, maybe take the bandolim out there- and everyone seems to be in accord. Home @ midnight- an 18-hour day and I am fried.

Sunday I wake up so tired, turn off the alarm and oversleep until almost 11:00- the time the São Salvador roda begins. But I am too tired to pack up & tear off to roda. Somehow even the thought of carrying my amplifier there by bus/metro seems impossible. I move in slow motion, too tired to do more than make a mental note that life is loping ahead w/out me and there are things I am supposed to be doing. I finally call R to say that I will not make it to roda (he had planned not to go) so I can’t confirm our recording plans w/ Cassio there & he says he is so tired too & not to worry he’ll call Cassio later.

Relieved, I decide I should get out of the house anyway & just hang out in the sunshine for a change. So I walk down the hill to the somehow hilarious contrast of be-ribboned boats in the harbor for the procession of São Pedro to my left, and a demonstration against the design school in the soon-to-be-rebuilt Casino on my right. And I decide, for no good reason except that no girl is ever too tired to shop, that I will hop on the bus and go to the Feria de Hype (Hippie Fair), held every Sunday @ Praça General Osorio. And I have a fun time buying earrings & a necklace to wear for the concert (from my Amazon seed guy, whose booth has returned), eating Bahian food- a check-pea-flour dumpling w/ something a lot like shrimp gumbo on top, and a heavenly dessert that is a cross between rice pudding and angelfood cake.

It’s sunny and the fair isn’t crowded and the people-watching is amusing, so it takes a couple of hours for me to realize that I am still so tired, and really my day should be done. So I take the bus home, buy my favorite comfort supper- a box of Ades (a fruit & soymilk drink that is so delicious I can’t understand why we don’t have it in the US) & a package of cookies that are a lot like Arrowroot biscuits. It’s the Brazilian equivalent of  “animal crackers and cocoa to drink, that is the finest of suppers I think…” from the A. A. Milne poem. And truly it feels like winter here today. “When I grow up and can do as I please…” So I find the Spain/Germany Eurocup soccer game online & flop down in my bed w/ my food & watch it (yay Spain!). And tomorrow I will continue my life as a busy & happy bandolimist in Brazil.

And this log gets almost to the end of June, and almost to today. I’m behind in writing because of music & life, but am sending these words & pics that I hope you will enjoy. More adventures soon, but first, here’s wishing y’all a Happy 4th of July! Which here in Rio will simply be a Friday. All goes well w/ me, and I hope you too. Write to me, queridos, because I miss you all and wonder what you are up to back at home in summer.

Ate breve~
m

Os meus queridos~ I have been in Rio just over a week and much has occurred. Lots of music, lots of walking, lots of pictures, lots of fun & crazy things. Tonight is quiet, rainy, cool. But yesterday— the first day of winter here—was sunny and hot, over 90 for sure. There seems to be a 4-day cycle going on—and this is the 2nd since I arrived—of warm, hot, hotter, rain & cool, and then it starts over again. The Cariocas complain bitterly about how cold it gets at night and go around in heavy sweaters whenever it gets down to maybe 75, but meanwhile I’m living in a room with huge windows that don’t close all the way & there’s no glass at all in the window in the shower stall, so they can’t be planning on anything approaching my usual version of winter.

I arrived last Friday—the 13th—and Romulo met me at the airport. We dropped my bags at Miriam’s, chatted a bit with her, and went off for lunch at the Garota da Urca. I was feeling a bit frazzled—I think I cut it too close this time between wrapping things up at home and taking off for here—but it was good to be back all the same. Saturday was choro school. I forgot to set my watch to Rio time, so realized I was running an hour late too late to be on time for the 9:00 roda, but watched the end of it & then had interesting classes w/ Pedro Amorim. In Bandolim2 the assignment had been to memorize Carinhoso & figure out a counter-line for Naquele Tempo. I know Carinhoso pretty well since I just played it at Brinsley’s wedding, and improvised a counterline on the spot for NT that worked pretty well. Pedro also taught us Diabinho Maluco by ear. It wasn’t so hard to catch on because I have played the tune and it’ll be good to learn it by ear for next week.

Bandolim3 was just Jesse and Andre and a violinist and two of us who stayed from Bandolim2. Pedro taught us a beautiful waltz by Luperce Mranda by ear. Well, tried to. J&A mostly got it, but the rest of us were lost in the maze of arpeggios. I recorded it though & the assignment was to have the first section down by next week. Bandão was fun and I got to sit next to Marcilio, as usual. He’s playing in a Kurt Weil opera, and rehearsing for the Elizeth Cardosa musical that’s opening in Rio at the end of the month, and his group is just finishing up their CD of Joel’s music, with Joel himself recording the final track on Tuesday. He invited me to come to the session in Santa Teresa, which should be fun. & he promised that I could come over to Niteroi to work on chords with him after the musical is up & running & he has a bit more time.

After Bandão, Luiz, a guitar friend from many rodas, asked if I wanted to go over to Bar Urca for lunch, as has become a habit of many, so I got to hang out in the sun at the counter eating a mug of their delicious fish soup and speaking a quite amazing amount of Portuguese with some fellow students. He dropped me back at school where I chatted w/ Samantha & Marcia & then got dropped off at home by Romulo who had brought the bag of stuff I left at his place last time. I bought a phone card, called Joel to set up a lesson, bought some groceries and a Veja Rio magazine to check out the coming musical shows, and began to feel more settled.

In the evening I met R & Mariana downtown at the Teatro Municipal to hear a concert of the national symphony (not Henrique’s, another one) featuring the music of Piazzolla w/ a bandoneon soloist who was amazing. I left them at the Botofogo metro station & took the bus home on what turned out to be a hair-raising ride. The driver didn’t feel like waiting in a traffic jam so he went over to the other side of a divided street and drove against traffic while everyone in the bus yelled at him until he finally went back to the right side. It turned out that the traffic jam was caused by a car that had parked half on the sidewalk—as they all do—unfortunately making the street too narrow for busses to get through & one was stuck & everyone was out in the street pushing the car & directing traffic & the drivers were jockeying for position & our bus driver was trying to skitch out a car to turn onto the street that he wouldn’t now fit down anyway. Ai-yi-yi! It was good to get home & luckily I haven’t seen that bus driver since.

Sunday morning was the São Sebastian roda that I love so because it has become a community. We play, drink beer, sometimes capirinhas, talk. Romulo came this week, and Cassio was there with his clarinet, and Luiz, and the harmonica guy from the US, and Norma who plays accordion, and Ishmael, the blind drummer, and his aunt, and the man from the neighborhood who comes to listen & always chats w/ me, and the friend of Jorge’s who plays pandeiro, and of course Ana, who started the whole thing, and her always-beaming husband. I had my new little battery-powered amp & clip-on mic which did make my bandolim somewhat louder but, as with most amplification, it wasn’t as good as hoped for. In my next life I’m coming back as a sax player!

Mariana arrives at the end and we go w/ R & Cassio to have lunch in the very crowded & cheerful neighborhood botequim & afterwards they drop me back in Urca. About an hour later I get a call from TaxiPaulo & he & Marcelo come over to pick up the mic I brought down for M., who turns out to be a nice jolly guy. I ask them about mastering for the Agua no Feijão CD, as we are rapidly approaching this stage, & they have a friend who could do it @ Marcelo’s studio, so I’ll get Romulo & Pablo to check it out. TP has brought me a tiny doll of a Japanese lady playing whatever their instrument is that looks like a long-neck mandolin. He seems v.happy, having apparently broken up w/ his stressful girlfriend. Watching my friends go in & out of relationships here makes me glad to be sozinho at this point in my life. It’s so much easier to just live, work, and play music!

Monday always seems to be a rest day after a hectic music week-end. I walk to the Rio Sul Shopping to try to buy a port-ingles dictionary, having forgotten mine. There’s not a good one, but I buy a Brazilian portugues teach-yourself book to review & read some of it in the afternoon. It’s quite good, but I think would be daunting if I didn’t already know alot. I find out, for instance, that “mas” is but and “mais” is more—I’ve been mixing them up in emails forever! I practice some music, have a nice dinner w/ Miriam at home, and Marcilio calls to say the recording session w/ Joel is tomorrow @ 16:00 & he will email me the address. Paulo Sa also calls & we’ll meet Thursday @ the Villa Lobos school. & he tells me that we—he and I—are playing a concert at the Conservatorio Brasileiro on July 2nd! But what will we play? We’ll both bring music on Thursday and decide then.

Tuesday I have a surprising amount of online business to attend to, about my concert series @ RWU & Perishable Theatre and other gigs, emails with questions seeking answers, CD orders… It seems funny & v.modern to be able to deal w/ all this from Rio. I take a lunch break @ the Garota da Urca & leave @ 3ish for the recording session in Sta. Teresa. But I get off my bus too soon & walk around in unfamiliar territory before giving in and hailing a cab.

Joel is at the studio when I arrive & Marcilio & Jayme & Rui & the rest of the band (Agua de Moringue) arrive progressively later. This is the last track to be recorded and then the CD will be complete. It’s all music written by Joel & arranged by various members of the band. Today’s piece was written for Joel’s brother & arranged by Marcilio, who decided that Joel should record the bandolim part instead of him. After that happens we listen to the finished tracks, and this CD is absolutely incredible! I have the feeling that I am hearing something important and original. Joel continually asks what I think, and the rest of the band seem pleased that I like it so much.

I take a picture of them all in the studio, remembering all the famous pictures of famous Brazilian musicians I have seen in books and wondering if someday this will be one of those. It’s attached here. Afterwards we all go out to a bar where they know the woman owner & she sits w/ us & we drink copious amounts of beer & eat delicious snacks & Joel is v.happy & funny. It’s nice to hang out w/ him in an environment other than lessons at his house.

When I get home there’s a phone message (my phone was off in the studio) & an email from Miriam asking me to translate some text for her daughter Cecelia’s movie on Messias that will debut a week from Friday. Messias is an old wise artist who plays viola capira—a small open-tuning guitar that sounds somewhat like a harp—and sings and paints & drinks too much cachaca. I heard him play at a house party in 2005 & love his
music, so it will be fun to see the movie.

Wednesday morning there is an urgent call & email from Cecelia to look over some other English translation, so I do & make some small corrections. Wednesday afternoon is my lesson w/ Joel & I ride there & back w/TaxiPaulo—always events I look forward to. TP tells me that Romulo has spoken w/ Marcelo & Marcelo has arranged for a friend to master our CD @ M’s studio for a v.good price (R tells me later that M. is v.grateful the I brought the mic over for him, and is pretty much doing this as a favor.) Apparently we’re all meeting @ M’s studio tomorrow to check it out.

My lesson is good, and I know enough chords now that Joel & I can just play some choro too—switching melody and accompaniment. Boy, is that is thrill! Joel experiments w/ putting up temporary sound posts in my bandolim to see if that improves the sound, and I get to play both his new and old bandolins. And for the last hour of my weekly 5-hour “lesson” we listen to the mixes of his new waltz CD w/ piano for Biscoito Fino. He’s unhappy w/ the mix on a couple of tunes & plays me the unmixed versions as well & I agree—they’ve added too much compression and it interferes w/ Joel’s dramatic musical gestures making the end result less musical. & then TP arrives & of course he has to hear both versions & discuss everything & ultimately agree.

There is so much discussion in my life in Rio, so many opinions considered, so many ideas tossed back and forth—almost always in portugues. Brazilians like to discuss things and weigh options in a way that doesn’t happen so much in my life in the US. They like ideas, like to duel with them, & even sell philosophy books at magazine stands right next to the soap opera digest!

Later Wednesday night, after arriving home, I check through my computer & method-book duets to find possibilities for my duo concert w/ PauloSa the week after next. & Thursday I meet him downtown & we go for lunch in a lovely restaurant (rather than grabbing a bite at a stand-up lunch stand as we usually do) & talk about our book project & concert. Between us we have music for a good program of original mandolin duets for the concert—amazing! That will be good because it’s @ a music conservatory & for students, so I’m less inclined to play arrangements of Bach and violin duets. I’d rather showcase the mandolin’s own repertoire. I take home some of P’s pieces to copy, and we will practice next week. I have unfortunately forgotten to bring the template we decided on for the choro book, but we agree on a place to start & so will do that.

I have just arrived home from our meeting when Romulo calls & is in Laranjeiras meeting Pablo, and do I want to meet them there to go to Marcelo’s studio? So I am back on public transit, this time @ rush hour, but manage to make it there safely. R & I eat cake & wait for Pablo to finish his guitar lesson & I listen to some of the new mixes for the CD on his iPod. Pablo has done great work, removing the noise, selecting an interesting progression of solos from the sometimes huge swath of everyone recording everything on separate tracks. Soon P arrives— it’s good to see the boy—& we set off for Marcelo’s studio in Sta. Teresa. TaxiPaulo arrives there shortly after we do & soon he (a former recording engineer in the pre-computer days) & Marcelo & Pablo are into it, and R & I settle back to listen, as we are only really there as part of Team Pablo.

Two hours later the tech-guys seem to be in accord & we will master there at the start of July, after we have finished recording the last tracks. TP & M are suitably impressed w/ what Pablo has done w/ a really spartan recording system, so he is happy. I’m to come up w/ a tune order for the CD before we get to the mastering stage—something I like to do—and the boys ask me to write a blurb for the CD as well.

So Friday I write CD notes & credits all morning. & make final choices on concert rep & go get music copied @ UniRio for my concert w/ PauloSa. & eat my frequent lunch of acai & grilled chicken sandwich @ the botequim on the corner of Praia Vermelha on the
way home. (My favorite counter-guy is there & he brings the acai heaped up like an ice cream cone over the top of the cup and says welcome back w/ his contagious smile.) & I walk home & email the program to P. & finish memorizing Diabinho Maluco. & drive myself crazy trying to decipher the Luperce waltz from my video of Pedro. I finally write down the 1st section as close as I can get it and I’ll get Jesse to help me correct it tomorrow.

And I’m going to stop for now, and continue w/ week 2 later. Time to get out of the house, so I’m off to walk around Ipanema & get a late lunch & hopefully a small-size dictionary. Maybe even some music books or CDs @ Toca de Vinicius… I hope all goes well w/ y’all, and I will be back w/ more soon! I know most of you like to read these rambling travelogue-blogs & see the pics, because you’ve told me so. But if any of you are
tired of them just let me know & I’ll take you off. Or if the couple of you who I added are totally confused, you can either hang in, beg off, or read earlier logs on my website to catch up w/ the cast of characters that is my life in Rio. For me, it helps me feel more grounded to ink these fleeting events as they pass and share them w/ y’all now, because I’ll never remember or have time when I see you again.

So tchau, um beijo, & enjoy the pics!
m

Queridos ~ I ended last week’s log with: “Monday was my trip to Niteroi for an inspiring music session w/ Marcilio, and tonight I am going to Trapiche to hear him play…” I must learn not to try to predict the future while in Rio… My trip to see Marcilio on Monday is, indeed, marvelous. The skies are cloudy & it is blowing & misty but, after email “singing” happy birthday to my sister in Portuguese, I decide to take the ferry to Niteroi anyway, rather than the bus. Because how many times can you take a boat to your music lesson? So I catch the 107 bus to Praca XV (pronounced “prah-sah keen-zee”. It took quite awhile to realize the written and spoken were the same place.)

The boat takes 20 minutes to get to Niteroi, then I get another bus to the main beach where Marcilio picks me up. I have brought along copies of my waltz for Joel & 2 unfinished choro that have been languishing for nearly a year. Marcilio helped confirm/ correct my chord choices for “Siga en Frente” last year, so I want to talk to him more about choro chord progressions and get some ideas so maybe I can finish these other two. It’s a great afternoon – I learn so much about the unusual progressions and chord voicings that are actually usual in choro, giving it its characteristic flavor. He grabs his guitar and enthusiastically hunts for the right sound with me – there’s never just one choice – and helps me come up with some great chords for the waltz as well. Otimo!

After cake & a cafezinho he drives me to a dock closer to his house where I take a faster boat back to Rio, and walk to the nearby Ingreja da Antiga Se for a concert Henrique has called me about in the morning. The music is a requiem written by Marcos Portugal in 1816 for Queen Maria I, that was recently discovered & reconstructed for this concert as part of the celebration of 300 years of the Portuguese court in Rio. I am a half hour early, but it is already SRO, and there are TV cameras and lighting everywhere. I sit on the floor on my music bag and listen to the work – lovely, if overly influenced by Mozart and the Italian baroque- but am surprised not to see Henrique in the cello section.

I call his cell when it’s over & he is waiting for me outside. I’m still not entirely sure why he didn’t play, but whatever it is it has him annoyed. We drive to his son’s house to pick up his camera as Henrique has found a treasure trove of documents on the composer who is the subject of his doctoral dissertation in a small library in Friburgo, and he is going there to study & hopefully photograph them the next day. It is good to see him, as always, however briefly and however disgruntled he may be.

When I get home there are several emails from my advisees @ RWU who need help right away, so I am up late taking care of that. I am allowing myself to be on call 24/7 for the students while I am here in Rio. It seems that as we are not meeting for class twice a week they need quick responses to their emails to reassure them that we are still in touch. Teaching online allows me to be here, which is wonderful, but it takes as much time as teaching at home. I spend 6-8 hours on Monday and often Tuesday as well grading the past week’s work, posting grades, and sending update emails to the classes. The other 5 days it’s 2 or 3 hours answering emails and checking in on the online discussions. And then there’s the extra time for advising, looking up all the necessary information on the RWU website, and the things I do for fun, like researching & posting the “Brazilian rock song of the week”. I thought all the hours spent setting this up before I left would be the bulk of the work, but I was wrong. It’s really a good thing I have wireless internet here in my room or I would never get all the work done. Most of the students seem to have handled the transition to online well, and having the technical gurus @ RWU to refer problems to definitely helps. There are only a couple of students who have gone awol, and I’m sure they will check in w/ likely excuses when I return.

Tuesday I stick close to the computer as I have to finish last week’s grading. It’s a dismal rainy day & as a treat Marcelo makes brownies and maracuja jello. Apparently the tart fruit jello unlocks the chocolate. All I can say is- yummy! As a reward for my hard day in the office I am going to hear Marcilio sub @ Trapiche that night, but when I arrive he isn’t there, the music starts late (I write a nice sonnet & drink a caipirinha while I wait), and when it does it’s 4 different subs, there is no bandolim, and after about half an hour I am the only person in the bar who is not playing or working – dismal! I sneak upstairs to the bathroom and call TaxiPaulo to come get me asap! He’s there quickly & is talking to the doorman as I pay my bill. Apparently the days of choro at Trapiche are numbered, as the owners are unhappy that no one is coming, so they are probably going to turn Tuesday into another samba night. So sad – I have such great memories of the rodas here – I’m sure glad I came to every one I could!

Wednesday – sorely missing my usual lesson w/ Joel, who is still recording – I am once again working hard, but this time on my choro “Por Que Não?”. I put in the new chords and try to make some headway on the 3rd section, but it defies definition. It’s a cloudy day, but I go for a walk to stretch my legs, and give myself the photo assignment of taking pictures of doors in Urca. It’s interesting & soon expands its focus, as you can see in the pictures. I make a trip to centro by bus and metro to go to the bank & buy tickets for Epoca de Ouro who are playing on Sunday. This is the end of their national tour to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Jacob do Bandolim’s birth. They’re playing in a small hall so I don’t want to take a chance that the show will sell out, even though they are there for four nights.

In the evening I get word @ dinner that Maizie has had to have emergency surgery & is home from the hospital now recovering, but we will not be recording for her film on Thursday. So I arrange w/ Mirian to go visit her artist friend who painted the large soulful woman who watches over my bed and several other paintings in the house that I have fallen in love with. Muito legal!

Thursday begins w/ a funny encounter w/ a maracuja. Marcelo has told me that I should put one in my yogurt in the morning, so I cut one in half & scoop the seeds into the compost bin, but it’s as hard as a rock! I save it to ask Marcelo what’s wrong, and he smiles and says that I was supposed to eat what I threw away. It seems impossible, since the juice I’ve had is so orange and delicious, I imagined it must come from a peach-like fruit, not something that looks like the seeds inside a papaya. Ah, well… another lesson in Brazilian culture. I try it again the next morning & it is good and the seeds are nice and crunchy.

After struggling unsuccessfully yesterday to find a melody I like for the 3rd section of “Por Que Não,” the germ of one seems to have formed itself in my brain overnight, so I record it and fool around w/ some themes. I also have a good idea for the 2nd part of my slow choro, “Tercas no Trapiche,” and realize that it might just be a 2-part piece, as many slow choro are. I’ve just finished capturing my ideas on my recorder when Miriam descends from her upstairs room and we take the bus to the studio apartment of Maria Cisneiros in the Gloria neighborhood. As we walk in Maria is holding a painting that she says she just finished yesterday and I am instantly smitten.

I don’t know why, but her work always makes me smile and feel that life is pretty fine. The paintings are fairly-priced, though still expensive for me, but I buy the just-finished one & another smaller one– you see them in the pic of Marcia & Mirian – as well as two smaller ones on paper, because she will give me a discount for the 4, because she knows I love them. And I still feel happy, if surprised at myself, when I agree to give her all the money I have with me, and make the necessary bank withdrawals over the course of the next 2 days and return with the rest. But I need something in my Providence house that overflows with Brazilian-ness and reminds me of the feeling of joy that spontaneously opens in my brain for absolutely no reason except that I am here, so why not be happy – por que não! And in the evening I finish the choro of that name, which makes me happy too.

Friday morning I make the bank-studio pilgrimage to pay Maria, print out PQN, and stop for lunch at my favorite local botequim, Laguna Lanche e Pizzeria, on my way home. As I am having my usual Acai & grilled chicken sandwich, I somehow notice for the first time the flavors of the juice-drinks in the square glass circulating containers behind the lunch counter – reminiscent of old-fashioned snack bars in the US. But while we would have orange-aide, grape, and something red that purports to be cherry, the flavors here are guava, tangerine, and lime. Somehow the thought of guava (goiaba) being one of the big 3 flavors makes me smile.

Joel calls as I am walking home to see if I can come for a lesson as he finally has a day off from recording. Not today, alas, but Saturday? There is no EPM because of the holidays so I am free. He checks & calls back to say yes – great news! I stop at home for my music and bandolim and return to the public transportation system to meet Romulo @ 2:30 @ Estaão, near his apartment in Rio Comprido. We are driving to Mage to record w/ Pablo, and I’ve got my PJs & toothbrush because we’ll probably stay overnight if it goes late, as Mage is an hour drive north.

Unlike the 2 tunes we recorded last week, these 3 choro are band tunes and R & I are putting our parts down w/ Pablo’s guitar, to await the others who are unavailable today and so will record later. Pablo is not quite home when we arrive so we wait a bit then get to work. Around 11:00 PM, with 2 tunes arranged and recorded, I finally convince the guys to stop for pizza, and we meet Marcele, Pablo’s wife, as we are walking to the pizzeria and she comes too. Mage is a 1-road town, and it’s dirt. There are groups of people sitting in small local bars and snack shops, children playing in the streets, & we pass many people they know on the way. We eat, joke, talk, and return to P’s studio to try to record the 3rd tune, Bola Preta, but give up @ 2:30 AM with it still unfinished.

We sleep a few hours, get up, talk out production issues, eat breakfast, change some things in the mix of 3 previously-recorded tunes, and R & I make it back to Urca just in time for me to change my clothes, grab my recorder, and head out w/ TaxiPaulo for my lesson w/ Joel. And it’s a good one, well, they’re all good, but this one includes a break-through that occurs because I’m still trying to figure out why I couldn’t be Brazilian enough to play the 3rd section of Bola Preta convincingly last night. Joel somehow opens that door, and I am heartened to feel that when I return in June to put down this final track for the CD I will be ready to nail it.

Joel also goes upstairs and brings down his “golden bandolim,” the one from 1964 that he recorded all of his classic LPs with. It has some issues w/ the top collapsing now so he has moved on to other instruments, but this one is really special, and it’s a treat to be able to play it. TaxiPaulo comes in and takes pictures w/ his phone so I take out my camera & we both take some including the two here. On the way home I talk TP – who is not having much fun lately – into stopping for dinner. Speaking of fun – there is no really good translation in Portuguese. The dictionary meaning of “diversão” just isn’t right – that’s “amusing” which isn’t really “fun,” it’s something else. “Prazer” is too sensual – have fun!… that was fun… he’s a lot of fun to hang out with… – amusing or pleasure just aren’t right. Nobody here has been able to come up w/ a good term, so TP & I have just made fun a Portu-glish word. “Voce precisa ter mais fun!” (You need to have more fun). And he does, so we go out to a chicken barbeque restaurant & sit at the counter and talk to some Brazilian ladies, and some doo-rag dudes from Baltimore, and try to get the waiters to think of a translation for fun. No luck, but we do have some.

Sunday I head off early to the Hippie Fair (Feria de Hype) to look for some replacement seed-pod ear rings for my niece Ellis who was distressed when one of her original pair was crushed in her luggage. I comb the place but my Amazon guy isn’t there, but I do find some that are different but cool. I’ve got my bandolim in a backpack, instead of its usual case, because I’m going to the São Salvador roda afterwards, but just can’t see fording the crowds @ the Fair w/ my case. It turns out to be a conversation starter – who knew? I talk to lots of people & have fun in Portuguese. Catch a bus & metro to the roda & still have time to play for an hour or so, & then eat a late & interesting lunch w/ Rafael (not AnF’s, a different one), Luiz, Casio, and Monica – a film maker who comes to the rodas to listen.

Rf & I leave about 5:00 to go to the Epoca de Ouro concert. I have a ticket & he doesn’t & it’s sold out, but he & a couple of others from the roda who are waiting all get in when some of the reservations fail to show up to claim their tickets a half hour ahead. I wander upstairs to the theater – I was there once before w/ Brinsley & Alex to see Daniela Speilman – and ask the guard if I’m in the right place. He says no, the door’s locked, I should go down the hall, door on the left. And when I do I laugh, because he’s sent me backstage – because of the bandolim on my back he thinks I’m playing! Too funny! But since I’m there I laugh about the situation w/ Jorge do Pandeiro & wander in to say hi to Ronaldo, who gives me a hug & introduces me to everyone, as he always does, and I leave my backpack+bandolim on a front row seat & go back out to stand in line in the proper place. I’m soon joined by Romulo & Mariana, and then Jesse, whose gf Beth has gone off to dinner w/ friends instead. The concert is really good, and there are some surprise Japanese guest artists who variously play choro on sax, sing samba, and play traditional Japanese music on a koto. Afterwards we go out for dinner & a chopp (draft beer) & then I go home to work a bit online and sleep.

It’s my last week in Rio, so the next & final update will be sent from my own house in Providence. Life here in the pink room in Urca has been good – & hopefully I’ll be able to come back when I return mid-June, although Mirian may rent the room for a year so nothing is certain. I’m not worried though – eu tenho sorte no Rio (I have luck in Rio), so something, the right thing, will occur. I hope your gardens are a riot of flowers and that spring is truly sprung. It’s looking like another sunny day here- 2 in a row!- and I’m caught up on grading, so maybe I’m going to be able to find some of that indefinable Brazilian fun as I check off the items on my to-do list today. Por que não? Eu estou no Rio!

ate pronto!
m

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Os meus amigos~ All goes well in the Cuidad Maravihosa. “Marvelous City” – a common nickname for Rio – Cariocas aren’t shy about proclaiming their love for their hometown. I’m writing this on Tuesday instead of Monday, because of various adventures yesterday that will have to keep until next week. And it is – wait for it – raining to beat the band! It is raining so hard that I’ve closed one side of the window and the shutter on the other side and it still managed to blow in and soak a pile of music while I was eating lunch. But I am happy to report that there were actually 3 sunny days this past week, and I managed to squeeze in an hour on the beach during one of them.

Last Monday though, April 7, was terrible weather too – cloudy & rainy all day. I stayed indoors writing, grading, and waiting nervously for my online exam to start. It’s such a cool thing – that I can give an essay test to my class all together at a specific time in a specific place and still be thousands of miles away. But of course ever since Friday I have been emailing everyone involved – students, test proctor, technical gurus who will check in at the start to be sure everything is working – to make sure everyone remembers everything. So I await 5:00 (actually 6:00 in Rio), when the test is to magically open for the students at their computers, with bated breath.

[An aside – being in a foreign country makes one keenly aware of language. And I am constantly being asked to explain American English. For instance, why do we alone choose to call the gorgeous aubergine an “eggplant” ? – what does it have to do w/ eggs? – and what does a “relationship” have to do w/ boats…? So as soon as I typed “bated breath” I wondered where that phrase came from. And now, moments later, I am pleased to report that “bate” means “to moderate or restrain (a variation of “abate”), and that “with bated breath” means, as I intended, “in a state of suspenseful anticipation.” I also learned that the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1596 as found in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice i. iii. 125 ‘With bated breath, and whispring humblenesse.’ But I digress…]

My worries about the test prove to be unnecessary, as it all works perfectly, and neatly typed often fascinating essays begin popping up on my computer screen as soon as students finish writing them. Truly fantastic. On Tuesday I practice bandolim & email students in the morning – my seminar students are working on final papers and are required to send in progress reports and I email back advice, and I’m in “conversation” with my advisees who are preparing to register starting this week. I take myself off to my favorite Edson Folk museum by the Catete Palace for a break in the afternoon (the sculpture of the Mayday dance comes from there), and walk around a bit in the Gloria neighborhood until the rain drives me home. I head for Trapiche in the evening and this time none of the regulars are there – rats! It starts an hour later than usual too, and the 4 young players who are filling in are really good, but I do miss the glorious sounds of Eduardo on sax and Rui on clarinet.

Wednesday I meet Paulo Sa at the Conservatory downtown and sit in on a couple of his classes. I take my bandolim down for him to look at and he confirms that I do need a wider bridge (um cavalete mais lardo), and I should go to the famous shop Ao Bandolim D’Oro and tell them that I need to wait while it is done. Apparently a collapsing bridge is a fairly common problem w/ bandolims so most players opt to lessen their anxiety and also lessen the sound a bit – but sometimes increase the bass – by putting on a bridge that is about 3 times as thick as the original one. Given a street name I manage to find the shop and they say that if I return at 8:30 tomorrow they can fit a bridge for my instrument in an hour. So I will. Sergio has told me in the morning that it’s Mirian’s birthday, so I stop on the way home to buy her a cheerful yellow flowering plant in a pot, and later write her a card. When I get home there are great preparations for a party, and Mirian’s daughter, a couple of friends, and the charming Maizie and Tom (yes, I know that I said his name was Joel last time, but all Brazilian men seem to have 2 first names that they use interchangeably if they like them both) all soon arrive. We eat upstairs on the glorious rooftop deck – hither-to unknown to me, as “upstairs” is Mirian’s private domain. Marcelo has cooked a feast and we eat and talk until late.

Thursday morning I am at O Bandolim D’Oro slightly after 8:30 – having got off the bus a couple of stops too late and walked a long way in crowds of commuters. I pick out a couple of bridge templates and am directed upstairs to the workroom where Oswaldo promises he will take care of it, and by 10:30 I have a new bridge, and a new tailpiece and am on my way. I go to a few stores in centro looking for a long-sleeve shirt, as my ever-practical daughter read last week’s log and suggested that if I longed for one I should just buy one. It seems obvious, but also somehow wrong to me, and that opinion is supported by the results of my search. There ARE no long-sleeve shirts in Rio stores, except for some entirely frumpy sweat shirts that seem to proclaim, “well if you insist… ” Really – if there’s even a 3/4 length sleeve on one side, the other side is shoulderless & sleeveless – as if there’s a law that the total number of sleeves can never reach even 1 full-length. Although they do have some jackets that would be at home in New England in the early fall. I begin to check out people in the street, and nope, no long sleeve shirts. It’s somehow anti-Carioca to wear long sleeves. Maybe it’s a pride thing, or maybe denial, but it seems I must remain sleeveless.

In the afternoon I get a haircut – tired of endless clips to keep my unruly tresses in order. I just took a picture of myself because I can’t quite believe the results. I have achieved my childhood dream of having a mop of curly hair – a tad Shirley-Temple-ish – and quite a change from my usual straight New England locks. Actually my Rio friends always look in amazement at pictures of me “up north” with straight hair, so I guess my hair is another aspect of my life that changes when I come to Brazil. When I was a kid I used to believe that what was in your brain caused your hair to look like it did, so maybe my new hair look is really just a symptom of my new Rio mind.

The events of the day are not over yet, because today I will go to the mysterious music party I agreed to attend on Sunday. Marijo has already called and I confirmed so I head out by cab, in the rain, to her place in Ipanema. Then we continue on together to alt-Leblon, to the amazing house of her sister and brother-in-law for his weekly music party. Every Thursday he holds a musical evening – kindof a roda da chamber-music. Musicians, many from the symphony, come when they can – he never knows who will show up – and sight-read Mozart, Vivaldi, Schubert in quartets, quintets, whatever is called for.

The house is astonishing – built on a hill with many levels and we head to the second or third floor of maybe five, with a grand music room w/ two pianos, 6 music stands & chairs set up, a pool & deck – apparently there’s a tennis court on the roof, plants everywhere, and giant windows and glass walls that somehow give the illusion that you are outdoors while keeping you from the rain. And Stefan, our charming host, greets me w/ – don’t I know you? didn’t you play in Cecilia Mireiles Hall? And it turns out he was at Luiz’ piano concert there in August when I played. And he loved it so much that he invited Luiz to give a private concert at his house for his friends, unfortunately after I left. Oh my gosh – I am meeting an actual patron of the arts!

Maryjo and I are the first to arrive. Stefan is an older man who doesn’t play anymore himself, but has a glass case full of bowed strings that his guests will play, and a huge library of sheet music. A pianist arrives soon and we play a couple of choro and then the strings descend. Soon I am playing the oboe part on a Vivadli concerto with 2 violins, piano, and cello – what fun! We have a break for a fabulous dinner, more musicians arrive, more Vivaldi is played, then Mozart, then a reprise of a couple of choro at Stefan’s request when his wife Chris, Maryjo’s sister, arrives home from a late meeting, because she loves choro. The classical musicians are enthusiastically impressed. I am invited to Chris’ birthday party on May 1st, but, alas, I will already be back in the US. The musicians are so interesting – from England and Bosnia as well as Brazil. The small daughter of a violist falls asleep on the sofa as her father plays. We leave at 11:30, as the group is taking a break for snacks before continuing to play – usually, I’m told, until 1:00 AM. We are such wimps in the US with our 2-hour rehearsals! Chris sends us each home w/ a flower and Stefano extends an invitation to return any Thursday.

But Thursday is still not over, because when I return home there is email – a student crisis about advising, and a very interesting email from Zeca Louro. “I need to tell you that your website is awesome, really impressive. It is a work of love to Brazilian music and your instrument, the bandolim. I decided to place a link of your page on mine, which is Loronix. I hope you appreciate. Please tell me what you think about it. We have a really active community there and people will be delighted to get along with your art. Respect. zeca”

So I go to this website and it is amazing. Zeca has a put a huge collection of out-of-print Brazilian LPs online. He is doing this to preserve lost Brazilian music, to keep it from disappearing and to let other people in the world know about it. We exchange some emails, and he says, when I ask, that most are from his personal collection, about 1/3 are from the biggest collector of bossa nova LPs in Brazil, and a few are from people who go to his site. And there I am as a musician link. I wonder how he found me? But then I have a student’s inquiries to answer and, as he is registering in the morning, spend over an hour reading the course catalogue online, getting his transcript, marveling all the while that I can actually do this at 1:00 AM in Rio, and send him off an email of advice.

And the next day the sun slowly comes out from behind the morning clouds. I contemplate working in the morning & going to Ipanema in the afternoon, but maybe it will begin to rain! So I opt for an hour on the nearby Urca beach instead, and then practice and commune online w/ my RWU students in the afternoon. Saturday is EPM that starts w/ a roda, and continues w/ my two bandolim classes – this week w/ Afonso Machado who is substituting for Pedro Amorim. EPM looks like a ghost town – the directors Mauricio & Luciana are out, Marcilio & Rui are in Sao Paulo to play the Elizeth Cardosa musical, the percussion teacher is out – but we carry on. I play Brejeiro & Cochichando by heart for Afonso, earning snaps from my Bandolim 2 class, and in Bandolim 3 we learn the polca Santina by ear, and I do pretty well picking it up.

Bandao is hot – oh, yes, it’s miraculously still sunny- for the 2nd day in a row! I’m heading out for a sanduiche at the break but get picked up by Luiz and Marcia-guitar and we drive to Bar Urca for their scrumptious fish soup, and some very tasty bolinos de bacalau and pastiles do camarao (codfish balls and fried triangles of dough filled w/ shrimp). AnF isn’t practicing because M&M have a gig, and Pablo can’t come into town, but Rafael is there & he & Romulo & I play in a pick-up roda that turns out to be a lot of fun. I wander back to Urca, stopping for an Acai on the way at Laguna lanche – my regular lunch spot that got preempted for Bar Urca.

Sunday I meet R & Mariana at 8:30 AM & we are off to Mage to record, unfortunately missing my beloved Sunday-morning Sao Salvador roda. Starting w/ an idea of 2 tunes, but no rehearsal – and Pablo hasn’t even seen one of the pieces – we manage to arrange and record two very beautiful tracks for the CD – the waltz Flor do Mal, w/ Mariana & I as soloists, and Pixinguinha’s Desprezado, where R & I alternate the tune. I am really proud of us! And now we are on the way to a full CD. We arrange to go back on Friday afternoon so I can put down my last tracks before leaving. It is nice to be starting some tunes, instead of just putting down my parts on the nearly-full band tracks as I did when I first arrived. We chat, laugh, pretend to sob extravagantly at the so-beautifully-sad waltz (written in 1912 w/ lyrics from the suicide note of a famous poet), eat lunch w/ Pablo’s family partway through, and I arrive back in Urca 12 hours after I left, to eat some left-over dinner, chat & sleep.

Monday is my trip to Niteroi for an inspiring music session w/ Marcilio, and tonight I am going to Trapiche to hear him play, but those tales will have to wait until next week. I’m in my next-to-last week here on this trip, but I am so used to my 2-country commuter schedule now that I don’t even mind. I’ll be back mid-June until the end of July. But then it will be hard to leave, because I won’t be able to return for 5 months. My portugues is really improving, all on its own with seemingly no effort on my part. I understand nearly everything, and can figure out a way to pin enough words together that I can say mostly anything I want to, though frequently in a convoluted way. I go back and forth between portugues & ingles w/ my bi-lingual friends, and I often think in portuguese now – how did that happen? When did the ubiquitous packages of Trident gum begin to register in my brain a “tree-DEN-chee”? When did I become Marilene (mer-rah-LAY-nee) – I don’t know. I translate constantly as I walk, and my instinctive replies are no longer in English. Cuidad Maravihosa indeed!

There are fewer pics this week – somehow it didn’t seem right to whip the camera out in many of the places I found myself, or I simply forgot. I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. It is supposed to rain here until Saturday and then a cold front is coming through. But this is Rio, so cold is relative, and I doubt will even approach a New England version of chilly. But I may wish again for long sleeves…

ate a proxima semana!
m

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Ah, my friends, some weeks just aren’t meant to be written about. So I’ll write about some other things instead. This week could be summed up succinctly as I’m-sick-&-it’s-raining. As somebody quipped in an email – it sounds more like RI than RIO. It’s cold & I didn’t bring warm enough clothes. Last year I had to rush out & buy tank tops & flip flops as I had no clothes for hot weather. This year I have only tank tops and flip flops and tiny summer sweaters and I long for a long-sleeve shirt, ah, well…

Monday, 3-31, I was in a head-cold coma most of the day. Took a short walk to sit in a glimpse of afternoon sun that peaked through briefly & came home exhausted. Tuesday I was faced with Monday’s work undone, so I spent 6 straight hours at the computer catching up on grading and emailing my 100 students & advisees. But all day long I kept encouraging myself with the reward of going to Trapiche to hear choro that night – for the first time this trip. And so I did, meeting Romulo & Mariana by plan and Jesse by coincidence. 5 of the 7 regulars were out, but the subs were great and included Thiago Sousa – Ronaldo’s son – on bandolim. & Rogerio Caetano nailed down the kitchen with an iron stake – wow can that man play 7-chord! Left early coughing…

Wednesday I recovered from Tuesday. It is such a drag to be sick! But at least it isn’t dengue. Dengue is the word on everyone’s lips & the spector hovering over the slightest sniffle. It’s a tropical disease and the symptoms start as flu-like and escalate. It’s known as “break-bone fever” because of the severe body aches added to fever, headache & rash. It’s transmitted by one type of mosquito, there are 4 types of dengue, and getting one type makes you immune to that one, so I guess 4 is the maximum number of times you can get it. If you have it and are lucky you just feel terrible for 10 days. If it turns serious it can result in internal hemorrhaging and death. Brazil is in a complete uproar about it now as it has hit Rio and other cities – not just rural areas–and the deaths usually occur in poor children and it happens more or less every year at this time & there’s still no vaccine, so there’s much hand-wringing and finger-pointing, and how-could-we-let-this-happen-here in every newspaper. But, no, I do not have dengue, just a bad but regular cold.

Thursday the week seemed to be rushing on in a blur of nothingness but it stopped firmly here for my lesson with Joel. It is such an honor to be able to spend a 5 hour block of time with him every week. It is the best sort of lesson – some intense work, some chatting, some listening to him play, filming some of it, recording all of it. My portuguese comprehension has really improved and I can actually ask some questions now too. But most of what happens is that he is gradually transferring a tiny slice of Joel-ness to my music brain. This is often hard, as I don’t really know what is changing and he doesn’t really tell me. But by relentlessly drilling me on the tiniest nuance of phrasing or the exact best speed of a glissando or the specific micro-second alteration to the printed rhythm that to him seems best, he is subtly changing the way I approach choro. This can be enormously frustrating in the short term – right now I’m in limbo between my old and new again and sometimes the music just gets stuck and comes out in graceless chunks when I play in rodas or rehearsal. But sometimes it’s amazing, and a beautiful phrase or fast fill run will just appear, like it did at band practice Saturday, and my boys all laugh and say yep, she’s channeling Joel. Culture in music is such an interesting and indefinable thing.

When I get home from my lesson the house is cleanclean, the table set, Marcelo is at the stove, and Mirian’s brother & his wife are expected for dinner. They arrive – Joel and Maizie – and we have great food & talk. Somewhere in the process I’m requested to play & do & Maizie decides my music would be perfect for the intro to the documentary movie she is making on ‘o maestro’ and long-story-short she’ll pick me up at 8:30 the next morning to go to Niteroi. I’m not quite sure what is happening or why, but Maizie is convinced and as I am in Rio – por que nao?

So we go. Maizie is the embodiment of a free spirit and everyone adores her and does whatever she wants with a smile. Quite amazing. We are back and forth between two schools in Niteroi and since I can’t meet o maestro until 2:00 I meet everyone else. I meet the new maestro (conductor), play for everyone (Santa Morena is Maizie’s favorite), tune way down to play Nazareth with the piano teacher on an out-of-tune old relic of an instrument, meet a film student of Maizie’s, Jorge, who has incredible English that he has learned from a 2-year course, but mostly from movies. I finally meet o maestro, who is ~75. He has been the high-school band conductor for 30 years and came to his job by an unusual route because of sheer talent. He was the 8th child born and the first one to live in his family and he carries that responsibility seriously. His mother died when he was 11 (she must have put all her strength into making sure that one baby would finally live) and since his father was a barber he was trained to do that.

But one day the head of the Marine Band appeared in the door of his shop and asked for the musician who played trumpet there, and he was drafted into the Marine Band and never looked back. The maestro is dignified, smart, matter-of-fact about his life. The video is good, and it’s agreed that I will play something behind a voice-over section in the beginning, maybe under the credits at the end (Maizie is determined to get Santa Morena in). The band is amazing too. I play w/ them later under the new conductor – transposing from the clarinet part & unheard in the noise of a brass band, but nevertheess, there. Afterwards Maizie & Jorge drive across the whole city in rush hour to take me up an incredibly steep & winding road to the city park for a great view back to Rio, and we take lots of pictures. I get home about 12 hours after I left, and there goes Friday… w/ no grading or practice for EPM tomorrow. ah, well… My life in Rio often has a mind of its own and I can only follow along.

Saturday is the regular non-stop music – EPM in the morning, Agua no Feijao rehearsal in the afternoon (working up new material for the CD in our own unique arrangements – how interesting it is playing w/ a bunch of Brazilian boys/men), & Mario’s roda in the evening, quieter this time so I can actually be heard. In the middle of Receita da Samba though my bridge collapses flat with a sound like an explosion, so I have to take about a half hour de-tuning, putting it back up, replacing a broken E-string. Joel said I need a thicker bridge so I will have to try to sort that out.

Sunday is the roda at Sao Salvador, smaller because of rain and so also quieter. Afterwards I hang around to talk & eat some Baiana food made in a stand there by a cool-looking woman in a red turban. It’s a kindof fritter made with a bean flour that is fried, then split open and filled w/ shrimp and a spicy green sauce featuring okra. & I buy a couple of CDs from Luzinho – who sets up a stand every week to sell CDs & drinks. I also find myself agreeing to go to a music event on Thursday – one I have been invited to many times by a really nice woman, and I still can’t figure out what it is, but I really have to go or risk being rude. Home to a meal w/ my in-house crew and then practicing my new by-heart choro for EPM and grading the RWU week #2 assignments until much too late.

And now it’s Monday. Cloudy, but not raining; and I still have a cold, but didn’t wake up coughing. So maybe things improve? I’ve got 3 more weeks in Rio so, por que nao? I have some free time this week because Joel has had to cancel my lesson as he is recording all week, and Marcilio – who I plan to take a lesson with to help me figure out choro harmony (so many substitute chords that do indeed make the piece sound more Brazilian) – is in Sao Paulo all week playing in a musical about the life of the great Brazilian singer Elizeth Cardosa (such beautiful music, he says with a smile…).

I will meet Paulo Sa on Wednesday and otherwise have many choro to learn – everything at EPM is now by ear and we have an incredibly-tough waltz by Pedro Amorim to learn for his class. And many hours will be spent online running my classes one student at a time. I’m actually very proud of how well they are doing with their presentations and online discussion. Some of them are showing me much more involvement than they usually do in a live class- an unexpected benefit of this online experiment. So it’s been a tough week, but not without interest, and I’ll just have to see what the next week will bring, keeping my fingers crossed for better health and better weather.

beijinhos
m

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Queridos~ Well, I have played so much music this week that I can hardly believe it. And my online teaching has begun as well, so I have been splitting my days between school work and music. I usually work on my RWU courses in the mornings, practice a couple of hours, and then get out of the house and go somewhere – depending on the day. This was also the week of the cheapest & most expensive dinners to date in Rio, and as I start to write this on Sunday night I am basking in the fullness of the latter. But, as I continue on Monday morning I am blowing my nose quite miserably with a full-blown cold. Where did that come from? Too much fun & not enough sleep…? no, I don’t see any connection there… 😉 (& I waited on purpose to send this to be able to report that on Tuesday morning I have markedly improved.)

email hidden; JavaScript is required">email hidden; JavaScript is required" alt="" width="149" height="200" />Monday, March 24, was a relatively quiet & rainy day & I spent some computer time answering student questions about the start of the 5-week online portion of my courses. I go to EPM in the afternoon to pay my choro school tuition for the semester & chat w/ Marcia and Samantha (no portugues) over a cafezinho. Write last week’s log & send it on its way. Miriam & Luciana & I cook dinner, while holding an informal intercambio with Miriam – who is fluent in English – as moderator. A house guest arrives part way through the meal & there is much intense talk about the wrong-headedness of many plans to manage the rainforest in the Amazon, some US initiated. I am asked about “Obama-Hillary”– as I am frequently these days, since Cariocas are far more knowledgeable about our politics than we are about theirs. They actually seem surprised that I know the name of their president & their concerns about him. Luciana’s boyfriend arrives late, back from Easter in Buzios. We talk & drink wine too late.

Tuesday is another rainy day – the last of the summer rains, Paulo Sa says. I go centro to meet him between classes & we talk about the choro book we are planning. Also spend an hour in the Conservatorio library reading an excellent and out-of-print book on Brazilian popular music that I am definitely going to be looking for in used bookstores. Stop in a used CD store Paulo knows, but no choro CDs – apparently they go fast. The big news is that Paulo is coming to the states in September to be the guest artist at August’s Cape Cod mando weekend. So he’ll visit for awhile in Providence too. I get pretty wet walking around, but nothing compared to what lies ahead.

Home to grab my bandolim & off to Luiz’ 7:00 PM roda. As I emerge from the Lago da Machado metro it is absolutely pouring– and there’s the regular bandolimist straight ahead of me buying an umbrella. I follow his example (R$5) & dash with him through flooded streets to the bar. Romulo is there & Luiz and the others. But there are 2 birthday parties, so the place gets really noisy really fast. I play, but w/ the noise level it’s discouraging and subtleties are nonexistent. I leave early, still raining hard & very windy, and catch a cab home to finish grading rock exams from my last class in Bristol before spring break. It is not to be though, as shortly after I arrive there is a blackout. Urca is right on the water so rain storms are often more exciting here than in the rest of the city. I give up & go to sleep & the lights come back on sometime in the middle of the night.

On Wednesday I grade tests and enter grades online and field emails all morning. Out for a walk & late lunch – it’s cloudy but not actually raining – home & practice my choro that are in process of being memorized. In the evening have a very interesting talk about the musical differences between Brazilian rock & MBP (Musica Popular Brasileira) w/ my new “family” here in Urca – Mirian & her son Sergio, Luciana & her boyfriend, Marcelo (a chef, who is cooking diner), and a house guest who’s name I haven’t caught. I learn alot about some cool music styles & decide to include a Brazilian rock-song-of-the-week for my RWU students, so they’ll have an interesting souvenir of my time in Rio. Marcelo is sniffling… OK the genesis of my cold starts to become clear… We eat an excellent dinner – an in-house chef is a wonderful thing.

Thursday is sunny – hooray! I lie on the Urca beach for an hour and get all the sun I can handle. Practice, check course progress online, meet Romulo for coffee, and then we go to the Casuarina show at Centro Cultural Carioca (how’s that for alliteration?) where we are meeting Mariana. Joao Fernando plays bandolim in the group, and used to be a student of Paulo Sa’s. I know him from 2005 when he took a class I gave in Rio, “Classical technique for the Chorista”. He called earlier & wants a copy of my method book– luckily I’ve brought a couple extras. Jesse & his girlfriend are there as well, so we chat before the show starts about music & tourist things to do. I get a chance to talk a little w/ Joao too, and then the music starts & no talking is possible. The show is a mad scene – the club is packed & they adore the 7-person band, that has 4 percussionists, 4 singers and 3 instrumentalists. People are dancing in every available spot between tables, it’s nearly impossible to get a waiter’s attention. As I say to R&M later, for people to be this excited in New England it would have to be New Year’s Eve or a special occasion, not just Thursday at the local bar w/ the regular every-Thursday band. We leave after midnight– part-way through the 2nd set. Cariocas sure know how to party.

Friday I check RWU student online assignments & write emails all morning & have my lesson w/ Joel in the afternoon. We work really hard on interpretation of the choro I’ve memorized, and I ask him about some of the new ones Romulo has set for Agua no Feijao to learn. Time flies by. At one point, when I ask for some insight on Feitio, by Jacob, he tells me that Jacob actually wrote it for a tenor guitar, goes into the other room & gets one, tunes it up & plays Feitio down a 4th – as if it was written for mandola. Interesting.

TaxiPaulo picks me up & drops me at Ceclia Meireles Hall where I’m meeting Romulo & Mariana to see a Bach & Piazzolla concert. Her idea, of course, as she’s the classical musician. It’s an unusual concert – there are 4 full-size grand pianos on stage lined up side-to-side w/ staggered keyboards & tops off. Behind them is a small raised platform set up for a chamber orchestra of a dozen strings. After a couple of kindof cool Piazzolla pieces arranged for duo pianos, the real fun began w/ Bach’s concertos for 2, 3, and 4 harpsichords played on grand pianos. The most successful is the last one, that Bach basically rewrote from a Vivaldi concerto for 4 violins (yes, that was OK in the Baroque, it was considered a tribute not a rip-off) and sounds like a lost movement of the “4 Seasons”. Afterwards R&M go out dancing (at 10:30 PM!) & I go home. Well, I try – I start out in a cab that dies in the middle of the long tunnel to Botofogo – the driver turns around & says “desculpe, senora” & waggles the useless stick shift around. We luckily glide through the tunnel & I get home by walking & bus. Oh, and this is the night of the cheapest dinner, a delicious fried pastil filled w/ cheese & veggies that I bought for R$2 ($1.20) & ate a few feet from the door of the hall a few minutes before the concert started. They had their good review in Veja Rio posted on the front of the cart!

email hidden; JavaScript is required">email hidden; JavaScript is required" alt="" width="150" height="150" />Saturday is choro school – the first real one after the first rain-out. I am a little worried because they’ve cut repertory class (dealing w/ budget cuts) & didn’t put me in any theory class. But Pedro lets me take 2 bandolim classes again this year, and they are as different as can be. Bandolim 2 is on interpretation & learning by ear. In Bandolim 3, we actually learn a pretty complicated valse of Pedro’s by ear. Well, we start to learn it. I had my recorder going so I will work on it during the week. Bandao is also “by ear” – it’s a completely different approach than last year. This year reading is a last resort. I see Jesse in class & Ester at Bandao, & Marcus from AnF for the first time this trip.In the afternoon I go w/ R to his place & meet Pablo to talk about our CD. We are considering expanding it to make it full length rather than just a demo. It’s more cost effective that way, and the stuff we have now sounds really good. Then we go to a roda led by Mario, the original pandeiro player from Sao Salvador, and R has got a tape-on mike for me & Pablo has brought me an amplifier. So I am loud, if a bit shrill. Home, and overnight it rains & blows so hard that I have to pull the big windows shut & they rattle ferociously.

Sunday dawns cloudy but dry, & I make it to roda on time. Get to sit between Luiz & Casio, the best spot now that R has decided not to make this roda part of his weekly routine. Caula, a guitarist who is a teacher at EPM arrives partway through & is greeted by a round of applause. It’s a good roda & the volume is low enough that the bandolims can be heard nearly all the way through. I work on chords alot anyway, because it’s fun & I need to. And as we are playing the sun decides to stage a return! I leave as the music turns to forro & samba around 2:00. Work online for awhile &, finding myself still alone in the house, take myself out to dinner at the upstairs restaurant part of Bar Urca & have a delicious seafood pot. I end up taking most of it home as it’s huge. Mirian is there when I get back so she has a meal too, and there’s still some left. The rest of the house crew has arrived back from various get-aways by midnight.

I’ve been typing this on & off on Monday, sleeping, blowing my nose, coughing, and feeling generally icky. Grading will have to wait until tomorrow when I will hopefully be able to focus. Being at work at RWU while in Rio is an interesting concept and things seem to be going relatively smoothly. It does take a lot of time though, because there are lots of 1-on-1 written communications w/ 100+ students & advisees, a certain amount of email reminding, & the whole online grading process. It also puts me in a different mindset here– my brain isn’t so free to roam, poetry doesn’t leap to mind, I’m not writing music. But it’s an interesting experiment to combine my two world here, and it puts me in a similar position to most of the musicians I play with – just wait a minute while I step into this phone booth and change from a mild-mannered working stiff to a chorista upholding centuries of music traditions with virtuosity and spirit. We’ll see how the 2nd week goes…

beijinhos
m

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