Claudio Roditi is a Brazilian trumpeter and flugelhorn player who’s been active in the New York jazz scene from the mid-’70s on. He’s got a highly expressive style of playing with no sharp edges. Musical collaborator Bill Kirchner got it right when he noted that Roditi’s horn combines “the Clifford Brown/Lee Morgan idiom with the lyricism of Chet Baker.”
Brazilliance x4, released on February 10, 2009, took Roditi back to his homeland with a salute of the music of Brazil – but it boasted a somewhat different approach from, say, Eliane Elias’ well-received bossa nova tribute of the same year.
For one, Claudio Roditi’s quartet is all Brazilian: Roditi, Helio Alves on piano, Duduka da Fonseca on drums and one of my favorites of the era, Leonardo Cioglia on bass. The other distinction lies in his approach to the music.
Roditi has long been a schooled and prominent practitioner of American jazz, having worked with the likes of McCoy Tyner, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Henderson, Herbie Mann and Charlie Rouse. He embraces those influences on Brazilliance x4 in equal measure with his Brazilian side.
The vehicles he uses to express this perfect hybrid of Brazilian and American jazz consists of half cover tunes – songs written by Brazilians and one by Miles Davis (“Tune Up”) – along with four originals by Roditi himself. Except for “Tune Up,” these songs are very likely to be new to American audiences, and they are quality examples of the richly melodic and relaxed style of traditional sambas and bossa novas.
Claudio Roditi and his band performed these songs with delicate care and even when Roditi and Alves soloed, they did so to enhance these sensuous melodies – a reversal of the time-honored practice of using the songs as a springboard for blowing sessions.
“E Nada Mais,” the second track, was my personal favorite, with a beautiful melody and particularly sensitive performances by both Roditi and Alves. Two of the tracks on Brazilliance x4 were actually recorded live, but the gig was executed so smoothly, it’s hard to tell that.
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