Music and Musica at BEA - Brazilian Acoustic Ensemble

BEA - Brazilian Endowment for the Arts
240 E. 52nd street, New York, NY, 10022
United States
http://www.brazilianendowment.org/Música.php

Dominique Gagne -flute
Billy Newman - Guitars
Bina Coquet - 7 string and Gypsy Guitar
Tom do Pandeiro - percussion
Justin - Bandolim


The Brazilian Acoustic Ensemble is a group that is dedicating itself to the performance of varied instrumental music from many parts of Brazil. It is a quartet close to the style of the "regional," a typical arrangement of instruments one can find in Brazil for the performance of choro or for the purpose of backing up a singer.
As great a music bossa nova is, as the most commercially successful it has dominated the small amount of Brazilian music that reaches American ears. This ensemble has made it a commitment to explore the richness of other forms of Brazilian music and bring a different palette of emotion and color to it's audience. Through the various genres of music, different images of Brazil are conveyed. There is the pulse of the smaller cities, the Moorish influence (a la Portugal and Muslim West Coast Africa), the highly modern urbanity emitted by the wide intervals in modern choro. There is the impossibly bright racing frevo, carnival music that in a small ensemble rivals jazz in its twisting sense of musical line and rhythmic forward motion. There are the archaic European dance forms that have been perked up and re-africanized by Brazilian Northeast laborers such as xote (somewhat related to the European "Schottish"). All these contrasts both serve to educate audiences and serve as a springboard for improvisation and artistic expression for each individual member of the ensemble.