INTERVIEW: Saxophonist Jean-Pierre Zanella explores Brazilian music on new album

Photo: Jean-Pierre Zanella is a saxophonist whose new album is called Rio Minas. Photo courtesy of André Chevrier / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.

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There’s a hidden meaning to the name of Jean-Pierre Zanella’s new album. The recording is called Rio Minas, which seems simple enough, but those words actually pay tribute to two Brazilian musical greats: Chico Buarque, from Rio de Janeiro, and Milton Nascimento, from Minas Gareas in southeast Brazil.

Zanella, a jazz saxophonist by trade, honors these two living legends by reinterpreting some of their classic tunes. Helping him in this musical tribute are his band members Pierre François (piano), Rémi-Jean Leblanc (bass) and Paul Brochu (drums). There are also contributions from pianist André Dequech, trumpeter Ron Di Lauro and trombonist Muhammad Abdul Al-Khabyr, according to press notes.

Keeping the project in the family, Zanella also employs the help of his daughter, Sashana Souza Zanella, who sings on Nascimento’s “Morro Velho,” Buarque’s “Joana Francesa” and a song by Nascimento and guitarist Toninho Horta, “Beijo Partido.” Zanella’s wife, Mima Souza, even designed the album art.

The recording project for Zanella, a Montreal native, came after a special concert at Studio Victor in his hometown in 2015. The evening served as a celebration of Buarque and Nascimento’s musical contributions.

“The studio situation in any city now with computer stuff is difficult, so it was no longer viable,” Zanella said in a recent phone interview. “But to make it viable, at a certain point [the studio] was organizing these live concerts in the studio with a video team that would film the performance, and everything was recorded professionally. … So [the owner] called me and said, ‘How about doing a live show in front of a live audience? I can fit 40-45 people.'”

Zanella, a graduate of Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, agreed to the concert, and his wife persuaded him to make the evening focused on Brazilian music, in particular the sounds of Buarque and Nascimento. This style of music was not new to Zanella. His wife, who is Brazilian, had introduced him to the country’s music scene decades earlier, and they had been successful bringing many Brazilian artists to the Montreal area for gigs. (In fact, Zanella received the Ordem do Rio Branco by the Brazilian government for promoting cultural exchange between Brazil and Canada, according to a press release.)

“I had done Villa-Lobos & Antonio Carlos Jobim in a 2006 recording, so she says, ‘Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento,'” he remembers. “That’s how the project was born. Chico Buarque from Rio de Janeiro, so that’s what Rio stands for, and Milton Nascimento from Minas Geraes, so that’s how the whole project came about.”

After that 2015 concert, Zanella moved on to other projects, but sometimes he would come back to those tunes and re-create the tribute show in other venues. Their work stayed with him, and he knew he wanted to release his interpretations of their songs one day

Recording for Zanella is a delicate dance between original material, like Quattro Venti, and reinterpretations of the standards. He usually alternates between the two types, so when he was thinking about his next project, he remembered that magical night in 2015 with the music of Buarque and Nascimento.

“I kept some of the songs we had done for that performance, and in the meantime, I chose different tunes,” he said. “That’s how it boiled down to the tunes that are on the CD, so I changed some tunes and rearranged them because four years had gone by since I did it the first time. I like to alternate a CD with original material and another with interpretations rearranged. I think it’s interesting for a wider audience because I’m not necessarily a household name. … I would always record a standard rearranged, so at least there’s something that people can relate to. Oh yeah, I know this tune. That makes them sometime check out the album. That’s the whole idea behind Rio Minas.”

Zanella’s fascination with Buarque is a fairly recent interest, but his love for the music of Nascimento goes back several years. He was sitting at a café in Montreal, and he heard a wonderfully transfixing voice singing. Then the notes from a saxophone accompanied the voice, and this truly captured Zanella’s attention. The sax, after all, is his instrument of choice.

“In fact, this was Wayne Shorter [on sax],” Zanella remembers, and Nascimento was on vocals. “I didn’t even know who that guy was, but I was just amazed by his voice. I just asked the owner, who I found out later was Brazilian, and we became friends. This was probably ’82. … Then from that point on, I started checking out Milton Nascimento.”

For his master recital, Zanella even performed a Shorter-Nascimento piece called “Beauty and the Beast” from the album Native Dancer.

For Buarque, Zanella became interested in his French-language renditions of famous English-language songs. This type of cover tune was popular in Canada, and when Zanella was listening to them, he didn’t know Buarque was behind the tunes.

“So later on, especially when I met my wife Mima, I started listening to more stuff,” he said. “Chico came later in my development, but he’s just such an amazing songwriter, and the music and the lyrics. It was interesting to find out about that old world, Chico’s world, some amazing songs. That was interesting.”

Eventually Zanella saw Buarque in concert in 1994. He called the experience an “amazing” evening — a rare opportunity to see such a musical talent, someone who doesn’t often tour outside Brazil.

To honor both these legends, Zanella didn’t want to perfectly re-create the original compositions. After all, listeners can simply buy the recordings from the maestros themselves. He wanted to put his own stamp on the songs, thereby simultaneously paying tribute and letting fans hear his own skills shining through.

“I like to use the music as a canvas, and I make it sound like my sound,” he said. “There’s always this fusion of the jazz approach with the Brazilian material. That’s what I love about jazz because jazz is not only swing music. Jazz just connects to whatever. It just uses the material to improvise on and just go as long as you can.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Jean-Pierre Zanella’s new album is called Rio Minas and is now available from Arté Boréal Records. Click here for more information.