California Brazil Camp
My week in the redwoods
This year marks the 25th anniversary of California Brazil Camp, a music and dance event held in Cazadero, Sonoma County, in the heart of the California redwoods. I have been many times there as a teacher, and it has always been a great meeting of Brazilian and American musicians and dancers. It’s great to spend a week without the distraction of digital devices, only focusing on the music and the musical encounters.
…and there were many encounters. After spending a few days in the Amazon with virtuoso guitarist Alessandro Penezzi, it was great to meet again in California. We had some epic jams, playing choros and old sambas. We performed my arrangement of the first movement of Radamés Gnattali’s Suite Retratos. It’s a gorgeous homage to the great Pixinguinha. I don’t have a video of our performance at CBC, but you can check it out here when I played it with Douglas Lora back in 2011 at the Centrum Choro Workshop:
For me, the combination of Music and Nature is magical, and the beautiful environment at Cazadero is so inspiring. Check out these sequoias:
Austin Creek, Cazadero, CA. Photo by Jovino Santos Neto
Looking up at the giants. Photos by Jovino Santos Neto.
The food at Camp was top-notch, including a lot of Brazilian flavors cooked with love by the kitchen staff. Every night there was a performance focused on a specific theme: samba, forró, choro and jazz.
One morning I hiked up a hill while Mestre Pitoco de Airá was teaching a maracatu class, and the powerful drum grooves energized the forest in a mysterious way:
Here you can sample a bit of this class:
Maracatu combines Nagô grooves with the reverential spirit of a royal coronation. It is one of the least known and most powerful of Brazilian rhythms.
Of course, with all this inspiration, I composed 5 new tunes, one during my morning class each day. Soon the charts will be available for all in the free scores page of my site.
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Obrigado!
Jovino