Another Special Roda
February 26, 2004

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday (Quarta-feira de cinzas) and Zé Paulo decided to close out Carnival with a "roda de choro" at his parents house in Barra da Tijuca. He wanted it to be small and intimate, so he just invited some friends. However, most of Zé's friends are some of the best choro/samba musicians in Rio, so it wasn't a surprise as to the level of the roda. At one point the roda was almost like a mini orchestra. There were 5 6-string guitarists, 2 7-string guitarists, 3 bandolims, clarinet, cavaquinho .... an me, the only panderista in the roda! Many of these names won't mean anything unless you're aware of this local scene, but I want to list them for my own memories.

On 6 string there was:
Zé Paulo Becker, Bilinho Texeira, Rogerio Souza, Alfredo Del Penho (who also sang a bit)

7 string:
Carlinhos 7 cordas (who was part of Jacob do Bandolim's group and is about 80 years old!), Marcello Gonçalves

Bandolim:
Hamilton de Hollanda, Ronaldo do Bandolim and his son Tiago

Well, there were others, but that's enough for now. The highlight for me was playing with Hamilton and Ronaldo at the same time. I had never played with Hamilton before and it was really something. The two of them are without a doubt the 2 best bandolim players in Brasil and Hamilton is a true virtuoso (and about 27 years old). I had one on either side of me and it was wild.

The other highlights were playing trio with Rogerio and Hamilton (a tune of Rogerio's from a No Em Pingo D'Agua CD) and playing trio with Zé Paulo and Hamilton.

It was a pretty cool afternoon/evening.

Posted by Scott at 04:19 PM