STEFAN KOSCHITZKI & FABIANO PEREIRA – BRAZILIAN BLUES VOL. II

Release: 30.09.2022

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Description

Fabiano Pereira – vocals, guitars, cavaquinho
Stefan Koschitzki – saxophones, flutes, clarinets, keyboards, percussion
Franco Petrocca –  Bass
Jan-Philipp Wiesmann – drums
Cristiane Gavazzoni – percussion on tracks 1,4 and 10
Martin Sörös – piano on tracks 5 and 9
Marie Louise – backing vocals on tracks 3 and 4
Katrin Medde – backing vocals on track 2
Fola Dada – vocals on track 6
Jonny Kerry – vocals on track 2

Already the title-giving play on words “Brazilian Blues” breaks with relish with hardened-traditional ways of looking at what Brazilian music is and what the blues may be. Well aware of how juvenile-moving the essence of music constantly seeks new points of contact and forms of expression, Stefan Koschitzki and Fabiano Pereira bypass any kind of phrasing on their new album “Brazilian Blues Vol. II”. The two musicians, arrangers and composers see their project “Brazilian Blues” as a vehicle for the constant expansion of their collective musical language. It is about respectable things throughout: searching and finding new attitudes and current perspectives on traditional music styles such as blues and bossa nova. Of course, you have to understand the subtle nuances of both styles first.

In the band collective Mit4spiel5, Stefan Koschitzki (saxophone, clarinet, flute) and Fabiano Pereira (guitar, vocals) extensively sounded out the arcs of tension between jazz, blues and elegantly swinging metrics from Sugarloaf, adding European understandings of harmony. At the end of 2014, the two appeared for the first time as a two-man band with the album “Brasil Antigo”. The almost forgotten Brazilian song tradition choro was passionately and purely instrumentally revived and reinterpreted. The press was still hailing the record while Koschitzki/Pereira had long since set out on their next feat: “Brazilian Blues”. Released in November 2019 (on GLM FM 256), the ground-breaking work distilled the essences of bebop, bossa nova and pop into a flush, crisp masterpiece. Faithful listeners of the duo asked themselves afterwards what was supposed to come after that. Had Koschitzki/Pereira possibly already said everything they had to say with this album?
Not at all! Their new album “Brazilian Blues Vol. II” is by no means just the continuation of the old-er brother of the same name. Clearly more formal, more casual, more vital, more humorous and sometimes more zany than its predecessor, the ten new or re-arranged pieces are rushing into the present. They are fun, movement animations and soul tonics at the same time – free of common clichés. Those who sit still to the metrics of “Gib mir den Sommer” are probably simply over-whelmed by the passing of the Steely Dan pop-jazz torch, which Koschitzki/Pereira casually hold up to the sky with this feat, in order to brighten up the gloomy modern age a little. “I need the feeling of happiness,” Fabiano Pereira pleads in the chorus of the Stefan Koschitzki composition. The line takes on the air of a self-fulfilling prophesy while taking note of “Brazilian Blues Vol. II,” which should still be an object lesson even for Jamiroquai.
Once the doors and gates to the Koschitzki/Pereira house of unlimited musical expression have been opened, they reveal well-lit rooms full of lighter sides of heaviness. In “A Change Is Coming” and in the self-explanatory “Corona Blues” it wants to put a stop to the collective depri mood with finely ironic gospel resolution. Gravity is followed by heavenly-tender correspondences between silence and busyness. What reads – admittedly – contradictory, is translated into Koschitzki/Pereira language, an impressively embracing homage to the simultaneity of music. Nothing and nobody is excluded from the enjoyment of the same, all may, all shall even come together under the “Brazili-an Blues Vol. II” banner. That’s why the ten pieces from “Fingimento” to “Abre Alas” are absolutely music for the time.

Underneath the invitingly appealing surface, irresistible, professional soloistic finesses reveal them-selves. Like in the 70s when Arif Mardin’s intelligent arrangements created musical events even out of simple Bee Gees numbers, “Brazilian Blues Vol. II” makes you marvel at the sheer musicality of the album. At the same time, it stimulates all too human needs and longings. Playfully easy even. The desire for intimate dialogue and letting go of fixed structures echoes in the loosely pulsating “Amorous Allies”. The loud, noisy outside world is smoothly contrasted by the sublime “Isabella” samba. If you absolutely have to find a red thread in “Brazilian Blues Vol. II”, you will surely find it in the love for detail and in the many facetted humanity that hovers over all of the ten pieces like a friendly meta-message. In the age of identity-political hardening, a lot has been achieved with this – unintentionally, mind you, because Stefan Koschitzki and Fabiano Pereira are no propagandists. The philanthropic moment of “Brazilian Blues Vol. II”, however, lo-cks playfully easy and above all animated knots, because the songs remind us who we are or can be – inclined towards the con-structive.

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