Rio Blog: March 24-30, 2008

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

Return to Brazil Log page.