Trio Corrente
Brazilian instrumental music is incredibly rich. Brazilian musicians who venture in this field are used to mix the great rhythmic diversity we have with the sophistication of contemporary music’s harmony and the freedom of jazz improvisation. It’s not an easy journey and reaching musical excellence isn’t for everyone. It’s true that little of this good stuff reaches the general public through the radio, but eventually great musicians are recognized and rewarded for their talent and have a chance to reach a larger audience. This is the case of Trio Corrente, which recently won the Latin Grammy for its Song for Maura album, recorded alongside Cuban legend Paquito D’Rivera.
They opened with a neat sequence from the trio’s most recent album, Volume 3, from 2016: “Maçã”, featuring a striking piano arrangement by Fabio Torres, “Desprezado” and the fast-paced “Samba do Ribeiro”, composed by drummer Edu Ribeiro.
It is always difficult to highlight someone in a group where everyone is very good at what they do, but what struck me most were Paulo Paulelli’s bass lines and melodic improvisations. With equal ease playing double bass and the six-string electric bass, Paulelli is one of those musicians who, given the oportunity to freely improvise, opt to do it lyrically, searching for melodies, singing with the instrument.
After the first three songs playing as a trio, they call to the the stage mandolin player Hamilton de Holanda, one of the most extraordinary Brazilian musicians in activity (you know him from a previous review). With Hamilton, they play “Baião Doce”, from Paulelli’s solo work Insight Moments, “Nívea” (another one from Volume 3) and the Brazilian classic “Roda Viva”.
The quality of the compositions and the improvisations, and the level of interaction between the four musicians was nothing less than jaw-dropping, all done with that atmosphere of ease and fun that only great musicians have on stage.
At the end of the performance, the still unrecorded “A Saudade Vai Passar”, a composition by Hamilton, was the ground for their final, stunning improvisations.
It’s easy to find the Trio Corrente’s works on streaming platforms like Spotify and also on You Tube, but, if I were you, I’d start watching the great performance of the group recorded live for a Brazilian TV channel:
And, as always, there’s an album with more pictures from this concert on my Flickr account:
If you found this post interesting, take a second to click on the ❤ and help the story reach more readers like you.
Got a typo? A misused word? Let me know! English is not my primary language and I’d love to learn better (or new) ways to express myself.
