Choro Bandido, An English Choro Ensemble

In recent years the popularity of choro has spread outside Brazil, musicians worldwide have opened their ears to the spellbinding sound of this original music of Brazil and now devote their chops to learning and playing choro. - An example of this movement is the English choro ensemble, Choro Bandido, located in Surrey, UK. In 2008 Choro Bandido got together to explore Chorinho. The members of the quartet have been involved in various musical genres in their time. Classically trained violinist Alison Hopper cut her teeth on classical and folk music. Multi-instrumentalist Dave 'the hat' Anthony has played in many contemporary rock bands. He plays keyboards, violin, bass & percussion but for Choro Bandido has added cavaquinho to his instrumental armoury. Guitarist and teacher Brian Bull, a huge Django Reinhardt fan, has a long background playing Gypsy Jazz. Having added a seventh string Brian is now studying the works of the great Yamandú Costa and Dino 7 Cordas. Percussionist Mick Pyke's musical path has been from blues rock through reggae into African music and has now finished up in Brazilian music. He co-founded the samba bloco, Bloco do Sul, (in Surrey, UK) more than 21 years ago and still runs it with Dave. - In 2009 Choro Bandido travelled to California Brazil Camp (CBC) where they spent a week learning from Ted Falcon who is now professor of violin at the "Escola Brasileira de Choro Raphael Rabello" in Brasilia.

Choro Bandido have just completed a 6 track EP CD, shown above. There are just a handful of Choro groups in the UK where choro is little known, so they have chosen some classic tracks to introduce choro to their ever growing audience.



The cd is available from the website of Choro Bandido where you also will find further info on the group including several uploaded videos and audio tracks. - To give you an impression of Choro Bandido in action I insert a couple of videos from live-performance below. The first was recorded recently and features a rendition of Jacob do Bandolim's 'Vibracoes' - enjoy!


Here's a rendition of Waldir Azevedo's 'Brasileirinho' from the same live-performance as above



More music by Choro Bandido in streaming audio available by clicking here

Jo