Ronnie Scott's, London
Some of the quietest music ever coaxed into being at Ronnie Scott's was played on Tuesday night by Brazilian singer/songwriter Vinicius Cantu�ria, guitarist Bill Frisell and percussionist Marivaldo Dos Santos ? the trio being briefly in London to unveil their new Lagrimas Mexicanas (Mexican Tears) album, a sublime display of the leftfield lyricism that Cantu�ria and Frisell have been exploring on and off for 25 years.
The Brazilian wrote neo-bossa hits in his homeland in the 1980s, but shifted to New York's downtown jazz, improv and contemporary-classical scene in the next decade, and his Lagrimas Mexicanas songs reflect the ways wider contemporary musics have impacted on the city's diverse Hispanic communities. But an edgier modernism never really diverted Cantu�ria from the devotion to romantic love songs and seductive slow-burn melodies that he still shares with his first model, Antonio Carlos Jobim. That was evident in every cherished detail of his performances with Frisell.
Both seated with electric instruments, the two guitarists began so softly they could have been absentmindedly tuning up, before Dos Santos's trickle of cymbal sounds announced the beginnings of a strummed rhythm over which Frisell curled coolly ringing blues phrases, a distant drum pulse grew, and song-harmony chords coalesced as if out of a mist. Cantu�ria, who makes Astrud Gilberto sound like Tom Jones, sang in close to a whisper over pattering hand-drumming.
The sense that Cantu�ria was balancing a New York street scene with an inner world of nostalgia, yearning and wonderment was everywhere ? and a scattering of drumbeats, or barely struck guitar sounds from the master-texturalist Frisell, can have rarely sounded so freighted with meanings.
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