I got a tip a couple days ago from friend Rachel about a Brazilian band playing Choros at the Greek Restaurant Aegean in Shanghai. So, I went to check them out today, and have some Greek brunch over there. I just came from there and wow! What a great group. Choros (Portuguese for “cry”), or Chorinhos as they are often called are a popular Brazilian music usually featuring flute, guitar, and cavaquinho which is a small 4-string instrument that is shaped like a guitar but sounds more like a mandolin. This group had these three instruments as well as another guy playing pandeiro. I was also pleased to find that my good friend Tinho Pereira is the guitarist for this group. He is an amazing musician, who plays all styles of Brazilian, jazz and MPB on both guitar and 6-string bass. He is the regular bass player for the JZ Latin Project who play every friday at JZ.
Though the Choro is not exactly jazz, it’s not exactly NOT jazz either. There is plenty of improvising involved and it’s upbeat and fun. I love many kinds of Brazilian music and this is one of them so it was really a treat for me to get to hear these guys doing the real thing. They invited me to sit in for a couple tunes as well, which was lots of fun. Luckily they picked some slower tunes for me to join them on, as many Choros are 16th-note melodies that fly by way too fast! So I got off easy this time…but I better practice some fast Choros for next time, as I hope to sit in with them again some time.

They have been playing the last 2 saturdays at Aegean for brunch from about 12-2:30pm, and will play there one more time next saturday. Catch it if you can. They have also recently recorded an album which is on sale at their shows for 60 RMB.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 2:40 am and is filed under Concert Reviews, musicians' life, upcoming events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.