Brazil’s Mario Adnet Nominated for Latin Grammy

“I don't use folklore, I am the folklore,” Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos stated boldly while on one of many tours in Europe. Able to compose art songs and then go jam with street bands, Villa-Lobos gave birth to modern Brazilian music, both classical and popular.

Latin Grammy-winning composer, arranger, and performer Mario Adnet has traced this connection, highlighting Villa-Lobos’ wonderful songs, pieces that lie at the root of many of Brazil’s most important contemporary music figures. Adnet’s musical vision for some of Villa-Lobos’ neglected works bursts forth on Um Olhar Sobre Villa-Lobos (Borandá Music; 2013), with a precision and passion that has garnered him another Latin Grammy nomination, for Best Classical Album. Lush orchestral arrangements meet wonderful, warm popular voices including Edu Lobo, Milton Nascimento, Mônica Salmaso, Paula Santoro, Muiza Adnet. And naturally, no tribute to Villa-Lobos would be complete without striking guitar work, contributed by Yamandu Costa ("Mazurca Choro," originally for solo guitar). "Um olhar Sobre Villa-Lobos" had just been nominated for Best Classical Album on the 2013 Latin Grammy, the same category that Adnet won in 2004, with "Jobim Sinfonico". Mario's often more popular approach to Villa Lobos classical pieces is definitely a unique feature of his work,  putting him as one of the strong candidates for winning again this year.

When not composing his own pieces, or arranging and performing with international jazz greats (including Wynton Marsalis), Adnet has had a lifelong, profound engagement with key Brazilian composers, most notably Moacir Santos and Antonio Carlos Jobim, whose jazz, orchestral, and other works Adnet has painstakingly yet passionately arranged and recorded over the course of several decades. Adnet’s work kept leading him back to Villa-Lobos, and soon Adnet took his interest beyond general awareness, and deeper into the early 20th-century composer’s work. Villa-Lobos was influenced by modernism—from Stravinsky to Schoenberg—but equally powerfully impacted by Northeastern Brazilian traditions.

Read more: https://www.storyamp.com/dispatch/4866/9NBloqWFV_ud81-exbeu2A

The guitarist, singer and composer, Mario Adnet, studied music....

The guitarist, singer and composer, Mario Adnet, studied music in the United States and Austria in the 1970´s. In 1980, he recorded an album with the pianist, Alberto Rosenblit and was an arranger for Polygram (now Universal).

In the 90´s, some of his compositions were recorded by great names of Brazilian popular music, as Joyce, Leny Andrade and Lisa Ono, among others. But it was in ´94 – when Tom Jobim recorded an arrangement for the classical, Maracangalha, by Dorival Caymmi – that Mario had his talent recognized.

In 2004, Biscoito Fino re-released the CD, Pedra Bonita, which has the participation of Tom Jobim, Joyce, Paulo Moura and Ivan Lins, among others. In 2005 the CD, Para Gershwin e Jobim was re-released.