released January 26, 2024

The project Villa-Lobos in Jazz is a quartet of jazz musicians (piano, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass and drums) whose repertoire includes original jazz interpretations of pieces by the great Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos. On this album, we have also included pieces by musicians whom Villa-Lobos admired, such as Bach, and others by musicians inspired by him, such as Antônio Carlos Jobim, Ary Barroso and Baden Powell. Alongside his work as a composer, Villa-Lobos took a keen interest in researching deeply into the folklore of his native country, preserving tunes which are part of the childhood of all Brazilians, and which celebrate Brazilian culture.
In 2011, Heitor Villa-Lobos would have celebrated his 124th birthday. It was he who created a national musical identity for his country, Brazil. While Director of Musical and Artistic Education during the Vargas regime in the thirties, Villa-Lobos managed to collect a great deal of Brazilian folk music, all the way from north to south. This featured all kinds of popular music: songs and hymns, and even percussion pieces, very often transforming them into his own “classical” style.
Also enjoying an academic career, as professor of music at the Colegio Pedro II in Rio de Janeiro he sought to introduce natural sounds into music, for example, the sounds made by frogs, tropical birds, rivers, streams, forest storms, and so on. 
His work as a composer includes preludes, piano studies, string quartets, suites, waltzes, and, famously, Bachianas, all of which remind us of the unique character of the Brazilian imagination. What Villa-Lobos was attempting was to achieve his own musical rendition of the musical traditions of this tropical country. Thus, for example, he adds the sounds of the forest, sounds made by Indios, Africans, and many other native sounds: the songs, the “choros” and the sambas. We notice when brazilians listen to Villa-Lobos’ children songs (lullabies) that they feel drawn in by all this beauty and originality, reminiscent of all the emotions of our young years, and which is stored in our collective memory.
After having travelled with our project all around Brazil we are preparing to take this music beyond our country. The warm reception which our performances have received and the strong cultural character of the music we play, deeply rooted in the history of Brazilian music, has given us the feeling that we are worthy ambassadors of „a pride of being Brazilian“ anywhere in the world.
We are sure that you will greatly enjoy in Villa-Lobos in Jazz. We feel it a great honour to acquaint the wider world with Brazilian music.