Oh yes! In my longstanding love affair with Brazilian music, finding and acquiring this rates quite highly.
I’ve known and loved the work of Antonio Carlos Jobim for decades now. And I’ve long known, as any ardent admirer of such things ought to, that Vinicius de Moraes was a crucial ‘elder statesman’ figure – both literally and metaphorically – in relation to many prominent folk in Brazilian music, ‘Tom’ Jobim among them.
Anyway, it’s taken until now – kind of (more on this later) – to really discover this old and early gem from their collaborations. Orpheus of the Conception is a play by de Moraes, for which he got Jobim to do the music, this recording being waxed in ‘56.
And so it is that I’m learning that certain Jobim tunes go back further than I’d formerly realised. For example, ‘Lamento No Morro’, which I first encountered as the instrumental ‘Lamento’, and which also features prominently in the beautiful ‘Overture’, here.
So too with ‘Se Todos Fossem Iguais A Você’, or literally, ‘If Everyone Were Like You’, which is generally better known to English speakers as ‘Someone To Light Up My Life’. I thought this was a later composition. Not so!
This recording features Jobim as musical director – literally credited here as ‘maestro’! – of the 35 piece Odeon record label orchestra. And it’s a 50th anniversary release, from 2006, on the same Odeon label. So this 50th celebration is now itself 18 years of age… old enough to drink/vote, etc.
The vocals, which later in his career would prob’ be sung by Jobim, or even de Moraes (who often sang with singer/guitarist Toquinho), are handled here – when it’s not ‘chorus’ style vocals – by one Roberto Paiva. A new name to me.
Pavia died aged 93, in 2014. So, unlike de Moraes (d. 1980, at 66), Jobim (d. ‘94, aged 67), or Bonfa (d. 2001, 78), he was still around when this recording turned 50!
My only quibble with this disc – the reason it’s four stars, not five – is how short it is. The seven tracks total approx 17:30, the whole clocking in at under twenty minutes! This same music has been repackaged, along with lots of other stuff, on releases such as this:
I’m a bit worried I might just’ve bought a CD duplicating just a small portion of another CD (or set of) that I might already own… I need to check the CD shelves.
Anyway, whilst it’s very different in many ways from what Jobim would go on to do in his own right – when he was established enough to do things his own way – it’s great to hear his ideas in a different setting, and the seeds of his style.