Lúdico

New cd featuring the Danish-Brasilian trio Tresafinado is a magnificent example of the vitality of contemporary choro.

The Danish-Brasilian trio Tresafinado from Copenhagen is "(...) a rendezvous of three musicians: two classical musicians, flautist Pia Kaufmanas and guitarist Torsten Borbye Nielsen, and the Brazilian drummer and percussionist, Afonso Corrêa, who brings with him the wealth of Brazilian music with its vivacious, sensual rhythms" according to the official website of the trio

The trio presents its musical repertoire this way: "In a repertoire based on the Spanish and South-american music Tresafinado explores new possibilities, performing classical music together with other styles. The strong Spanish spirit of de Falla and the all-embracing musical language of Villa-Lobos is presented next to a Brazilian choro, a Venezuelian waltz or just a simple folksong." The trio was established 1998 and has performed with this repertoire that also was presented at Tresafinado's first cd titled 'Tresafinado - 3 Musicians'; audio examples available at the website, click here. - Tresafinado has also co-operated with larger ensembles and their second cd reflects this through recordings of religious music with participation of vocalists from Brønderslev Kirkes Pigekor; audio examples available here.
.In 2008 Tresafinado was invited to participate in the ”IV Festival Nacional de Choro” in Brazil, which inspired guitarist Torsten Borbye Nielsen to compose several choros that were enthusiastically received by the Brasilian audience during the trio's performance and praised by the well known musician and producer, Mauricio Carrilho The result of this was that Tresafinado was invited to Rio in March 2010 to record some of this material in the studio of Acari records. The recordings from this session are now available on the just released cd, Lúdico, shown below

The title of the cd, Lùdico, which also is the title of one of the featured compositions, means 'to play' or 'play together'. Trio Tresafinado is accompanied by three well known Brasilian musicians on several of the 16 tracks on the cd: Mauricio Carrilho, Pedro Aragão, Luciana Rabello, and there is a guest performance by Nailor Proveta on a couple of tracks as well. The cd is produced by Mauricio Carrilho in co-operation with the trio. The main part of the repertoire consists of choros or choro related compositions, nine of them composed by guitarist Torsten Borbye Nielsen and arranged together with Mauricio Carrilho: Lembrancas de São Pedro (TangoBrasileiro),"Helene"(Choro Cancão),"Graciosa"(Waltz),"Pipocou!"(Polka), "Maria" (Waltz), "Valsa pro Proveta" (Waltz),"Lùdico" (Choro), "Ricardo no choro" (Choro) and "Festa"(Choro). The cd has two compositions by Mauricio Carrilho: "Maxixe pro Afonso" (Maxixe) and "Koala" (a Toada-Lundu), a classic by Radamés Gnattali,"Remexendo" (Choro), arranged by Carrilho and finally outside the choro repertoire two tangos from Astor Piazolla's suite "Histoire du Tango: Bordel 1900 & Nightclub 1960" arranged by Afonso Corréa, and "Viento y Madera" by the Costa Rican composer Fidel Gamboa arranged by Tresafinado. The Scandinavian imprint is further expressed in a reading of "A Fiddler in Rio", a composition by the famous Danish jazz fiddler Svend Asmussen written in 1954 as a tribute to Jacob do Bandolim and here performed by Tresafinado accompanied by Pedro Aragão (bandolim), Mauricio Carrilho (violão 7 cordas) and Luciana Rabello (cavaquinho).- The performance of the music is flawless and generates an intimate atmosphere, everything is well arranged and executed to the benefit of the beauty of the compositions - a very successfull meeting of kindred spirits and great musicians across The Atlantic. As mentioned, the cd is recorded in Acari's studio in Rio in March 2010 and it was released January this year on Tresafinado's own label (Tresafinado Records, T 1001) in co-operation with Gateway Music.
The cd is available for purchase at the website of Tresafinado here and here; it may also be purchased from iTunes, here

Tresafinado has uploaded a video at YouTube with footage from the recording of the cd and featuring the audio of the title track, "Lúdico", inserted below to give you an impression of these highly recommended recordings - Enjoy!

Jo