Nelson Ayres....

Although its always discrete position, the pianista, arranjador and composer Nelson Ayres is widely recognized as ones of the personalities most important of instrumental music Brazilian contemporary, one innovative constant. It initiated its career in the decade of 60, dividing palco with other students who brought for São Paulo the rising movement of bossa new, as Taiguara, Toquinho and Chico Buarque.
With a scholarship, the first Brazilian pupil became to attend a course the famous Berklee College of Music in Boston, where, with the saxofonista Vitor Assis Brazil, he created quinteto the Five, first group of Brazilian instrumental music of the American coast east. In the United States he touched and he recorded with Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, Astrud Gilbert in the height of its success, Ron Carter, Walter Booker and other musicians of weight. In the return for Brazil, he was looked for by São Paulo professional musicians to transmit what he had learned in its American season.
The mounted informal course for these musicians was the origin of the Big Band de Nelson Ayres, that can be considered the main nucleus of revigoração of the São Paulo instrumental music of the decade of 70. During eight years the orchestra if presented all the second fairs for auditoriums crowded in the August Audience and Opposed 2004, and took instrumental music for the university circuit.
It was also figure of prominence in the two legendary Festivals of Jazz São Paulo/Montreux, presenting itself it the side of Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie and Toots Thielemans. The decade of 80 was dedicated to the Wood Brazil, one quinteto that it at the time considered for Brazilian instrumental music a different way of the predominant jazz-rock. An invitation of Radio France for participation in the Festival of Jazz of diverse Paris was the beginning of tournées for the Europe and Japan, beyond the writing of some records launched internationally.
With Cesar Camargo Mariano, the spectacle estrelou in 1984/85 Prism, first Brazilian show to use computation resources intensively allies the electronic instruments. In the decade of 90, Nelson Ayres was turned again toward orquestral music, acting per nine years as regent and artistic director of the Symphonic Orchestra Jazz of the State of São Paulo, being main the responsible one for its enormous success.
It has conducted frequently other orchestras in Brazil and the exterior, having included the prestigious Filarmônica Orchestra of Israel, considered one of the best ones of the world, having been recently in Brazil under the regency of Zubin Mehta. Compositions of Nelson Ayres had been recorded for Cesar Mariano, Milton Birth, Herbie Mann, Kenny Kotwick, Joyce, Ivan Lins, and Marlui Miranda, among others. Its compositions of erudite music have been executed for orchestras, solistas and groups of chamber in the whole world, as the Symphonic Orchestra of Jerusalem, New York Symphonyc Brass Quintet, Henry Bok and Julliard Brass Quintet.
She was commissioner for the Symphonic Orchestra of the State of São Paulo, to compose its Concert for Percussion and Orchestra, estreado in December of 2001 in the São Paulo Room. From 2000 it came back to dedicate to it the piano, leading the Nelson Ayres Trio, that count on the participation of ALBERTO LUCCAS, contrabass, and RICARDO FLY, battery. In 2003 it launched the COMPACT DISC, Close to the Heart. The band-heading, although to be instrumental, was between the three finalistas as " better song" of the Prize Tim 2004. Its new work is TRIO 202, with violonista ULISSES ROCK and acordeonista TONINHO FERRAGUTTI, that appear in April of 2007 in the prestigious Standards Jazz, in New York.