 Musical styles ranged from the romantic ballad The Day She Called Up the First Teardrop, composed specially for the group by David Paul Jones to the foot-stomping Pé Quebrado by Thomas Rohrer, which featured an unforgettable duo between Thomas on the rabeca and Shetlander Chris Stout on the fiddle. A local radio station produced four one-hour programs about the project, documenting the process and the results in depth. A public-service TV channel will air two 45-minute television programmes in São Paulo later in the year and a CD is also in the offing. But even more exciting is an invitation to the Brazilian musicians to tour Scotland with their Scottish colleagues in November/December 2003, with generous support from the Scottish Arts Council. Read more about this project |
In March and April 2003, British Council Brazil in partnership with SESC São Paulo staged five concerts in São Paulo and Curitiba, in the ambitious ‘MPB - BPM 3 - The Scotland Brazil Edition’. Sixteen musicians, eight from each country, played everything from the fiddle to the accordion, the berimbau to the electronic sampler, drawing on the rich musical traditions of each country to create a new, exciting and innovative sound. The rich mix included elements of work songs from Bahia, collected by singer and researcher Renata Mattar, and from Scotland, sung in Gallic by the traditional singer Alyth McCormack. The latter provided an excellent reminder that English is not the only language native to the British Isles. Another revelation was the Celtic Harp, played with virtuosity by Catriona McCormack, who brought the unique sound of the instrument into many of the pieces.