Brazilian vocalist Claudia Villela (from the SFJAZZ Web page for her current series of performances)
Last night I walked over to the SFJAZZ Center to listen to the first of the eight performances by vocalist Claudia Villela planned for the latter half of this week. On her past visits to SFJAZZ, she has provided retrospective salutes to composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, the Getz/Gilberto album of Stan Getz and João Gilberto, and vocalist Elis Regina. However, she is also a composer in her own right, with plenty of evidence in the three albums she has released to date.
Over the course of her visit, Villela has planned performances with a variety of different instrumentalists. Last night, however, began with a duo set with her longtime collaborator and guitarist Ricardo Peixoto. He accompanied her when she sang from the piano (which, of course, she was playing), took center stage with a diversity of percussion instruments, or just sang with the guitar accompaniment. By way of a disclaimer, I should make it clear that this was my first encounter with both Villela and Peixoto; and every song that she delivered was new to me.
As a result, I came away humbled by how little I knew of the Brazilian genre. I was also totally blown away by the imaginatively diverse approaches that Villela took to scat singing. If I had no idea of the semantics behind any of the words she sang, I could still revel it the rich diversity of her vocal techniques. These were grounded in an intense delivery that left me marveling at how she could consistently keep her energy level high over the course of her one-hour set.
I came away from the SFJAZZ Center hoping that this would be only the first of many encounters with Villela’s repertoire and style.
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