Mentz, Fabio - Cantigas
SKU
RDMNC024
Holy crap, this Brazilian CD which seemingly came out of nowhere completely ripped my head off. It uses instrumentation like bassoon (Mentz is a bassoonist and he also plays piano and flute), piano, clarinets, bass, drums and more. It's not all perfectly in this vein, but the best parts (well over half the album to my mind) combine aspects of the groups and the sound that I think of as 'melodic RIO/avant progressive" (Lars Hollmer/Von Zamla, L'Ensemble Raye, Nimal, Albert Marcoeur, Claudia Quintet, etc.) into a wonderful whole that doesn't sound like any one of those bands, but certainly fits in with them.
"Fabio Mentz plays basson in an orchestra called OSPA, in southern Brazil, he composes soundtracks for theater, movies and still work as art director. The main idea behind Cantigas, his 1st CD, is to use the simple structure of the regional music for childrem (Cantigas) in a context where he could get advantage of the skills of each one of the musicians, a blues-jazz-rock influenced bass, a diverse rhythms (including influences from Brazil, Africa, India, Eastern Europe and Native Indians from Brazil) and more classical oriented clarinet and basson-piano. The main themes are simple, as in the songs used to childrem play or sleep, and they are presented in a modal base that is cyclic and evolves with improvisations and compositions where all the musicians helped to built their parts. In 2004, this CD received some prizes in Brazil. Besides the quartet, it brings four guests playing sitar, accordion and assortet brazilian and indian percussion. It was recorded live with just a few overdubs."