Moacir de Todos Os Santos

In his liner notes, Gilberto Gil calls this album ‘a work of great magnitude.’ Rich in musical history, but tinged with sadness, it's a reimagining of the debut album of one of the greats of Brazilian jazz, Moacir Santos. Coisas (Things) appeared in 1965, a ground-breaking fusion of Afro-Brazilian rhythms with the kind of symphonic jazz associated with Miles Davis’ collaborator, Gil Evans. Sadly, the Bahian composer, educator and multi-instrumentalist Letieres Leite, who (re)arranged seven of the nine original coisas and founded the Orkestra Rumpilezz big band, died while the album was being mixed. Even sadder, trombonist Raul de Souza, who features prominently on ‘Coisa No 4’, also died, in 2021. Committed to what he called the Bahian Percussive Universe, Leite inverted the classic big bands by having the percussion in front of the wind. With neither piano nor double bass, the Candomblé drums have a potent presence. With distinguished soloists and the leader's sumptuous arrangements, this rhythmic and brassy 22-piece behemoth can produce variegated music of genuine beauty as well as power. A fitting legacy to a talent who died much too young.