Villa-Lobos Superstar

When the members of Pau Brasil stepped onto their road to becoming a crucial band in Brazil's contemporary instrumental music during the first half of the 1980s, the country was still fighting to come out of its military dictatorship. Somehow the group would get in sync with Brazil's reawakening to democracy, questioning its collective identity and bringing together both past and future, primitive folklore, indigenous traditions and an avant-garde exploratory stance.
Named after a wood that was heavily traded during the colonial period, but also after the modernist Oswald de Andrade's poetic manifesto of 1924, Pau Brasil's prominent activities took them to a status almost comparable to that of national heroes Hermeto Pascoal or Egberto Gismonti. They have covered a lot of ground in Brazilian music, from Chico Buarque's songs to Concerto Antropofágico (again inspired by Andrade's seminal writings), but few recordings sound as vital as Villa-Lobos Superstar does. Picking up on the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos, arguably the most important classical composer to have come out of Brazil, Pau Brasil navigate between contemporary classical, jazz and regional popular music, shedding new light on Villa-Lobos' exquisite, hybrid and delightful melancholic creations, all the while finding a truly Brazilian flavour in every corner of these pieces.