Brazilian night to transform Tannery Pond

By Jenn Smith, Berkshire Eagle Staff
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. -- On Saturday, the summer Tannery Pond Concerts series will trade Bach and Brahms for an energetic blend of Brazilian tunes. This night of Brazilian music brings in Brookline-based, Juilliard-trained flute player Paula Robison; Rio de Janeiro-born Brazilian-style guitarist Romero Lubambo; and São Paulo-born world music percussionist Cyro Baptista.

"It’s just a very upbeat kind of performance that they have. For my audience it is a very drastic but welcome change," said Christian Steiner, artistic director for Tannery Pond. A concert pianist known as a photographer of musicians, Steiner felt this group of Brazilian music players would be a powerful and progressive performance to showcase in Tannery Pond’s 20th anniversary season.

This will be the second time Robison will bring Brazilian music to Tannery Pond, he said. Like most performers who play in Tannery Pond’s 19th-century Shaker auditorium, Robison has become good friends with Steiner. Steiner has known Robison for 40 years, first through his camera lens. At the time, Robison was performing in New York City’s Young Concert Artists program, founded by his friend Susan Wadsworth in 1961.

"Paula was one of the more glamorous looking members in the group, so I always gave her a special place in a photograph. Since I was also a pianist, we could talk about music. Soon we became friends," Steiner said

The two kept in touch, and she later suggested that Tannery Pond highlight Brazilian music.
 
"We did, and people just loved it," said Steiner. "Paula is one of the best flutists in the United States. She’s a classical artist who does this on the side. Yes, it is different than our repertoire, but it’s just as beloved." As a young musician, Robison always wanted to try things on her own. "As a flute player, I wanted to be a soloist, just to be an adventurer in music. Even though I was a classical music student, there were other kinds of music I heard that I thought maybe I would try for myself and see if it would fly," she said.

At one recital she played, a pianist friend told her that a lot of Brazilian music is made for flute, guitar and percussion. Listening to Brazilian CDs led Robeson to Cyro Baptista’s percussion. He and his wife, Eleonora Alberto, moved from Brazil to New York, where they and Robison eventually met.

"The first kind of Brazilian music I heard was called choro," said Robison. "It’s like our blues music, a mix of African music. You see, the Portuguese slave holders brought the Africans to Brazil, and the Africans brought with them a treasure that is inestimable in the cultures of both of the Americas. Wherever the Africans landed, they brought their rhythms, and their call-and-answer vocals. In our culture, it was ragtime and blues. It’s the same thing with choro and samba in Brazil."

Robison and Baptista began collaborating around 1991. Soon after, he introduced her to a friend and bossa nova musician Romero Lubambo. Bossa Nova evolved from samba music in the late 1950s, a "more sophisticated, more polished" sound, according to Robison. It has also been likened to "cool jazz," most famously reflected in the 1960s international hit "The Girl From Ipanema."

"Romero is one of the most prominent bossa guitarists," said Robison.

The three began playing music together, each bringing their own different musical background to a session. In their early days, they were joined by bass and cavaquinho (a small four-string guitar) player Sérgio Brandão, and they made a couple of recordings, including the 1998 album "Rio Days Rio Nights."

"As years went on, we again evolved, with it being Cyro, Romero and me. We all wanted to preserve our differences we have in music so we called it ‘mistura nova.’ It’s not a crossover sound; it’s more like the new mix," said Robison. "It’s a crazy quilt of cultures we have to stitch together when we rehearse, and it’s so divine."

Robison, Lubambo, and Baptista will beckon the Tannery Pond audience to listen and move to this unique fusion of music. They will make the wooden Tannery Pond building their own, adding a few bar stools for seating, and Baptista will bring in crates of percussion instruments. "It is off the beaten path for a chamber music organization, but it’s going to be great," said Leslie Teicholz, president of the Tannery Pond Concerts Board. "I do think Christian is courageous to ask us back," said Robison, " but if people can come and be with us in the music, and let go of their worldly cares, this music will unite us all in beauty and fun."
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