Word: bossa
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with competent sidemen, Schwartz is undeniably sweet and ponderous on "Peace Dollar" and offers striking introspective moments such as the Billy Strayhorn ballad "Chelsea Bridge". Schwartz also borrows from funk, soul and hip-hop influences, stretching out melodically on the fusion-groove "Don't Ask", and an eight-minute bossa nova "The Curve of The Earth" provides some expansive and impressive melodic inventions, while still maintaining a paradoxically loose and driving Latin feel. Everything emerges extremely ear-friendly, and while Schwartz doesn't provide extraordinary insights into old material, he does offer a varying array of comfortable, well-worn tunes...
...with two of the hottest young guns on the New York City jazz scene, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart, for a bare-bones blowing session recorded in two days flat. The songs range from no-nonsense blues like Metheny's own (Go) Git It to a feathery bossa nova romp through the harmonic obstacle course of John Coltrane's Giant Steps. The biggest surprise is the old-fashioned show tune A Lot of Livin' to Do, coolly reharmonized in the oblique, quizzical manner of Metheny's idol, the peerless jazz guitarist Jim Hall. Metheny's three previous trio...
DIED. CHARLIE BYRD, 74, classically trained jazz-guitar virtuoso; of cancer; in Annapolis, Md. His 1962 album Jazz Samba, with saxophonist Stan Getz, popularized bossa nova in North America. Byrd recorded more than 100 albums, and was honored this year by Brazil as a Knight of the Rio Branco...
...Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool (1994) deftly combines the talents of jazz acts (Ron Carter, Joshua Redman) and hip-hoppers (the Roots, Spearhead). Red Hot + Rio (1996) features such performers as Maxwell, Sting and Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora exploring the music of Brazil; a terrific companion CD, Nova Bossa: Red Hot on Verve, showcases the work of Brazilian acts from the '50s, '60s and '70s (Antonio Carlos Jobim, Caetano Veloso...
...find it's indigestible. Thankfully, and refreshingly, kitsch-pop masters Pizzicato Five can still render postmodernism an enjoyably tasteful joy ride. They trip through safe and smiley TV-land in a jalopy heap slapped together from '60s and jap pop, hip hop beats, funk threads, classical samples, bossa nova riffs and exotica, running on smooth easy-listening gas. Maki Nomiya and Yasuharu Konishi blend and blush an all-Japanese soundtrack to the imaginary lifestyle of the international playboy/girl set. "Rolls Royce" is experimentally clever but strung on an annoying shrill that detracts from adorable bubbletunes like "La Depression," "Playboy Playgirl...