Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Who we are

Tupiniquim Jazz Orquestra emerged in the last quarter of 2010 when a few young musicians from the Brazilian Orquestra de Sopros Pró-Arte (OSPA) in Rio de Janeiro gathered a group of friends and decided to revive classic compositions from Brazilian folk and popular musical traditions through carefully crafted arrangements – especially made for dancing.

The group’s name originated from a piece by a great Brazilian composer, Sivuca, entitled Jazz Tupiniquim. A full-fledged samba with plenty of room for spontaneous improvisation, Jazz Tupiniquim is a prime example of a wider cultural and artistic movement, in which musicians who come from diverse backgrounds and are inspired by multiple cultural forms reclaim, through the beauty of their work, the ‘universality’ of Brazilian music and the ‘Brazilianity’ of world music. Many other world renowned composers such as Villa Lobos, Hermeto Pascoal, Tom Jobim, Egberto Gismonti, Chico Buarque, amongst many others, have directly or indirectly contributed to the questioning of pre-established and constantly reified musical categories and labels, celebrating the inclusion of multiple artistic expressions which can and must be molded by local traditions, in a dynamic spiral of incessant cultural exchange

In a nutshell, this is our philosophy: to bring out what is best from the so-called ‘classical’ Brazilian tradition, translating it into rich language that draws from other cultural influences and movements in order to speak in a free and effortless way to an eclectic audience, in Brazil and throughout the world.

We combine popular compositions with modern and sophisticated arrangements – prepared by widely acknowledged musicians such as Jovino Santos Neto, Zeca Assumpção, Jayme Vignoli, Eduardo Neves, as well as Tupiniquim’s own – so that the result is an energetic and refreshing repertoire. In its own special way, we sing our Jazz in Tupiniquim, where the universal rule is dance and samba is but one of the many languages on the dancefloor.