Maria Mendes, Metropole Orkest, John Beasley: Saudade, Colour of Love

Vocal Jazz / Fado
premiera polska: 2023-01-09
kontynent: Europa
kraj: Portugalia
opakowanie: Jewelcaseowe etui
opis:
multikulti.com * * * * 1/2
Nagranie na żywo z Marią Mendes w towarzystwie laureatów Grammy Award - Metropole Orkest pod batutą Johna Beasleya (zespół zgromadził już ponad 20 nominacji do Grammy Award)
„Muzyka Fado jest kulturowym fundamentem dla Portugalczyków, a dla wszystkich tych, którzy szukają nostalgicznej miłości w przeszłości i teraźniejszości nieodzowną fascynacją. Fenomen Fado doskonale oddaje portugalskie słowo "saudade", którego nie da się przetłumaczyć na żaden inny język na świecie.
Fado i "saudade" związane są wieczną więzią. Oba wyrażają melancholijną tęsknotę za przeszłością i nadzieję, że znów stanie się teraźniejszością. Wyrażają też wiarę w przeznaczenie, jako szczęśliwą i fatalistyczną siłę, od której nie można uciec.
Tytuł "Saudade, Colour of Love" jest niemałą wskazówką, „o czym jest ta płyta", bowiem to najbardziej wyjątkowe ze słów w języku portugalskim "Saudade" nie ma odpowiednika w języku polskim. Bo jakże w jednym słowie zawrzeć to szczególne uczucie, które pochodzi od szczęśliwego wspomnienia, a które jednocześnie sprawia ból?
"Saudade, Colour of Love" to nowa płyta portugalskiej wokalistki Marii Mendes w towarzystwie laureatów Grammy Award - Metropole Orkest pod batutą Johna Beasleya.

Tak o płycie pisze Maria Mendes:
"Album, który trzymacie w rękach, jest spełnieniem mojego marzenia. Nagrany na żywo stanowi prawdziwą i ekscytującą okazję do wzbogacenie formuły wykonawczej w sposób, którego nie można uzyskać podczas nagrywania w studio. Nowe piosenki i nowe aranżacje zostały napisane specjalnie na potrzeby tego projektu, a premiera i nagranie miały miejsce w Amsterdamie, w Muziekgebouw w maju 2022 roku.
Na scenie wyjątkowy zespół trzydziestu muzyków - mój zespół i Metropole Orkest pod dyrekcją Johna Beasleya. No i oczywiście wspaniała publiczność, która nieustannie dostarczała nam radości ze wspólnego muzykowania, w końcu muzyka na żywo jest po prostu niezastąpiona. Wittgenstein powiedział, że "granice mojego języka oznaczają granice mojego świata". Wierzę w muzykę, jako nieograniczony język, który przekracza granice stylistyczne i może wywołać (zarówno w muzykach, jak i słuchaczach) zaskoczenie i oczarowanie. Ta muzyka jest o tym, jak czuję Fado i jak je kocham, wolna od definicji, wolna od ograniczeń. To nie jest album Fado. To nie jest tradycyjna muzyka jazzowa. To przygoda, która jest prawdziwa i każdy może być jej uczestnikiem, tak jak każdy może kochać."

Potężny i ekspresyjny głos Marii Mendes niesie w sobie głęboką duszę fado z przekonującą autentycznością. To co szczególnie uwodzi to kunszt aranżacyjny i mistrzostwo wykonawcze muzyków zgromadzonych na scenie Muziekgebouw. Fado to dość proste piosenki mające określoną linię melodyczną i strukturę harmoniczną. Łatwo można je zinfantylizować, lub zanadto skomplikować. Ale dla wytrawnych artystów, jakim bez wątpienia są Maria Mendes i John Beasley są one fantastyczną podstawą do rozbudowywania i improwizowania na ich podstawie.
Mamy zatem do czynienia z reinterpretacją i jednoczeniem brzmień, stylów, wyobraźni i instrumentów znanych z Fado i muzyki jazzowej.
autor: Mateusz Matyjak
Copyright © 1996-2023 Multikulti Project. All rights reserved

"A remarkable live recording with extraordinarily committed and impassioned performance from both vocalist and orchestra. A love letter both to fado and to jazz, and the boundless possibilities that come from marrying the two, Saudade, Colour of Love represents a stunning achievement." - Jazzwise, 4 STARS

"Impressively atmospheric with excellent soloists among them Maria Mendes. More than what Mendes delivers on her new live album is almost impossible." - Concerto, 5 STARS

"this is a singer whose voice will leave no one unmoved, as clear and pure and as full of conviction as I have rarely heard. A true musical party with lots of vocal acrobatics from Mendes, () this album continues with wonderful melodies that are seamlessly interpreted by the superb Metropole Orkest and the heavenly vocals of Maria Mendes." - Rootstime

JazzTimes:
Saudade, Colour of Love isn’t so much a follow-up to Netherlands-based vocalist Maria Mendes’ 2019 album Close to Me, which won the Dutch equivalent of a jazz vocal Grammy Award. Rather, it’s a captivating elaboration featuring much the same material and the same cast of characters.
Like Close to Me, her third album, Saudade is a sumptuous collaboration with pianist John Beasley conducting the Metropole Orkest, a mainstay of the Dutch music scene since the end of World War II. But whereas the former release was a studio project, the new album is a concert recording that offers Mendes and some orchestra members a little more leeway to stretch out on a fado-centric program. Trained as an opera singer, the Portuguese-born Mendes veered off the conservatory path with her discovery of jazz, attaining real authority in the tradition after years of study. Working with Beasley, who produced and orchestrated the Saudade arrangements they wrote together (part of a most impressive run for Beasley, with Saudade arriving the same year as his spectacular work on Chucho Valdés’ late-career masterwork La Creación), Mendes takes another step into a largely uncharted realm where jazz inflects the ritualistic laments of fado, a blues-like song form that evolved on Lisbon’s hard-scrabble waterfront.
Kicking off with “Com Que Voz,” a song that fado legend Amália Rodrigues recorded at the peak of her powers in 1969, Saudade features four of the same pieces as Close to Me, including “Foi Deus,” which has a sparkling Beasley solo, and Hermeto Pascoal’s episodic “Hermeto’s Fado for Maria.” They close the album on an upbeat note with “Meu Pobre Capitão,” a piece they cowrote and set to a loping Brazilian groove that belies the desultory title.
by Andrew Gilbert

allmusic.com:
A collaboration between vocalist Maria Mendes and the Netherlands' Metropole Orkest with pianist/composer John Beasley, 2022's Saudade, Colour of Love is a gorgeous Brazilian-inspired jazz production. Born in Portugal and based in the Netherlands for over a decade, Mendes brings a worldly sophistication to her vocal jazz. It was that sophistication that garnered her and Beasley a Latin Grammy nomination for their previous collaboration, 2019's Close to Me. Saudade, Colour of Love is very much a spiritual companion piece to its predecessor as Mendes and Beasley deftly weave together Portuguese fado, bossa nova, and expansive symphonic jazz arrangements. Vocally, Mendes has a pitch-perfect style, marked by a warm resonance, bright articulation, and endless lyricism that she punctuates with forays into improvisational vocalese. Tracks like the opening "Com Que Voz" and "Tudo Isto E Fado" have the lush, swinging warmth of Frank Sinatra's 1960s albums with arranger Nelson Riddle. But whereas Sinatra would sink into a song with his light baritone, Mendes soars, lilting birdlike over a verse before rising skyward with a tremulous accent. It's a style she fully embraces on the kinetic Latin number "Verdes Anos," diving and fluttering with falsetto vocalese improvisations against a shimmering piano and the orchestra's vibrating strings. Elsewhere, we get the fusion-esque "Quando Eu Era Pequenina" with its muted, alien horn lines and the equally infectious Tropicalia-sounding "Meu Pobre Capitão," both of which evoke the vibrant, stylistically cross-pollinated '70s work of artists like Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa.
by Matt Collar

Editor's info:
Fado music is undeniable for the Portuguese people and for all of those who seek for nostalgic love in the past and present. And so is saudade – a Portuguese word that doesn’t translate to any other language in the world. Fado and saudade are forever bond. They both express the melancholic longing for the past and the hopes it becomes present once again. They also express the belief in destiny as a fortunate and fatalistic power that you cannot escape from. Surprisingly, I find these comparable with love, as love can strike at any moment leaving us powerless, colouring our lives with grey as well as bright rainbow colours. When I first listened to Fado, I felt an indescribable connection with how words and melody were delivered so intensively. That experience stayed with me over the years until I could no longer escape from the desire to combine my love for Jazz with my affection for Portugal.

A project was taking shape. And magical things started to happen. Advised by my dear friend, my bassist Jasper Somsen, I’ve reached out to John Beasley for a collaboration on arranging and producing these Portuguese folk songs. Alongside, I have written originals and was gifted a song by Hermeto Pascoal. The Metropole Orkest joined us opening up new musical possibilities. My third album Close To Me (2019) is the result of this enriching collaboration that gracefully wasn’t doomed to be over then.

This album you are holding in your hands is a result of a long-awaited dream. A live recorded album represents the truthful and thrilling opportunity to expand the music in ways you cannot when recording in a studio. New songs and new orchestrations were specially written for this material, premiered and recorded in Amsterdam, at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in May 2022. On stage: an exceptional team of thirty musicians – my band and the Metropole Orkest conducted by John Beasley. With us in the venue was the audience who kept ignited the joy of why live music is irreplaceable. Wittgenstein said “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. I believe in music as an unlimited language that can defy stylistic boundaries and can trigger (in us musicians, and you, the listener) surprise and enchantment. This music is about how I feel Fado and how I love it, free of definitions, free of limitations. This is no Fado album. This is no traditional Jazz music. This is an adventure that is real and can be felt by everyone. As love is.

From her native Portugal to her adopted home in the Netherlands, Grammy and Latin Grammy-nominated vocalist and composer Maria Mendes has traveled a world of musical expression. Hailed by DownBeat magazine as “a jazz singer of the highest order,” Mendes’ praises have been sung by such legends as Quincy Jones and Hermeto Pascoal. On her third release, Close To Me (Justin Time), Mendes fuses jazz and Fado in collaboration with Grammy winners John Beasley and the Metropole Orkest. The vocalist has released three striking solo albums and thrilled audiences around the world, including performances at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC, North Sea and Montreux Jazz festivals. Mendes brings vibrant passion to every performance, whether in an intimate club or backed by orchestras and big bands. Her wealth of influences and experiences help make up what Exclusive magazine called “one of the most engaging, enchanting vocal approaches…that exists today.”

Close To Me got awarded with the 2020 EDISON® music prize for Best Jazz Vocal Album (equivalent to the Grammy, this is the most important Dutch music award).

muzycy:
Maria Mendes - Vocals
Cédric Hanriot - Piano
Jasper Somsen - Double bass
Mário Costa - Drums

Metropole Orkest / John Beasley

utwory:
1. Com Que Voz (A. Oulman - L. de Camões) 8:44
2. Tudo Isto É Fado (F. Carvalho - A. Teixeira Nazaré) 6:58
3. Verdes Anos (C. Paredes) 7:49
4. Foi Deus (A. Janes) 5:24
5. Hermeto's Fado For Maria (H. Pascoal) 5:43
6. E Se Nâo For Fado (F. Hime - T. Torres da Silva) 4:31
7. Dança Do Amor (M. J. Mendes) 6:58
8. Quando Eu Era Pequenina (Traditional) 8:07
9. Meu Pobre Capitão (M. J. Mendes - J. Beasley) 5:33

wydano: 2022-09-12
more info: www.challenge.nl
more info2: www.maria-mendes.com