Choro Ensemble
Choro Ensemble
Oct 01, 2007
There is a time machine located in a New York bar powered by a clarinet, a couple of guitars, a small hand drum, and the idiosyncratic sound of a playful, four-string offspring of the guitar called the cavaquinho (pronounced: kah-vah-KEEN-yo). When played in this configuration with just the right soul, listeners are transported to 1930s Brazil, when for the first time everâ"thanks to the emergence of broadcast radioâ"a single genre was being listened to by the notoriously diverse nation. That genre was choro (pronounced: SHO-ro), a sweet style of music that originated in Rio de Janeiro and which has been compared to a tropical Dixieland. Though practically every town in Brazil has its choro ensembles, up until this century, choro was virtually unheard of in the United States. But that changed when an unexpected chance meeting led to the creation of the Choro Ensemble, whose upcoming album, Nosso Tempo (Our Time), will be released August 14, 2007 on Anzic Records. In the hands of the Choro Ensemble, the acoustic style takes on a hipness somewhere between chamber music, jazz, and samba. In this podcast, we talk to Pedro Ramos, Sao-paolo born guitarist and founder of Choro Ensemble.
