The Reunion Project - Varanda album review: Brazilians with a tingle of the tinge

Varanda
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Artist: The Reunion Project
Genre: Jazz
Label: Tapestry

The Brazilian tinge has been there in jazz since at least the 1960s, when bossa nova briefly conquered the world, and much of the so-called “fusion” of the 1970s and ’80s owed at least something to that vast and diverse powerhouse of world music.

So it’s not surprising that the members of The Reunion Project – four distinguished fortysomething musicians from São Paolo plus one young lion – spent their own formative years listening to those hybrids, particularly Weather Report and Pat Metheny, alongside such pure Brazilian masters as Milton Nascimento and Hermeto Pascoal.

All those influences are discernible on this, their first recording as a group, a celebration of memory, influences and shared history from the cheerful side of the harmonic fence. felipesalles.com

Cormac Larkin

Cormac Larkin

Cormac Larkin, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a musician, writer and director