Album Review: ESPIRITO DO BRASIL - CICILIA KEMEZYS, Independent, CK9901-2, Reviewed by Tony Magee

Here is a great CD featuring the music of Brazil, as played by Canberra based Lithuanian flute virtuoso Cicilia Kemezys and guests.

The album was actually recorded in Rio de Janeiro, during Carnival February 1999, and there are many Brazilian musicians featured on it.

The album opens with a beautiful and haunting flute introduction, which melds smoothly into the uplifting and awakening samba, Berimbau, with full band. What a fantastic piece this is, and so brilliantly played

Five of the tracks are originals and this is a reflection of Kemezys time in Brazil with guitarist composer Steve Scott, who has also written tunes for this CD, and the incredible influences they have absorbed and re-created. For example the Scott/Kemezys composition Bairro Peixoto (track 2 on the CD), features a recording of a RIO street carnival at the beginning and then bursts into the most sublime and yet lively Samba with a wonderfully intriguing melody. By contrast, the following track, The First Spring, starts as a warm and gentle ballad with a hint of slow beguine underneath, moving to a samba and finally changing feel again to bossa nova.

Other selections include the wonderful Antonio Carlos Jobim tunes Agua De Beber (Water to Drink) and Triste (Sad). Gershwin’s Summertime receives the Latin treatment.

I see smart lunchtime sidewalk cafes; I see sophisticated cocktail functions; I see ritzy hotel restaurants; and most of all, I see thousands of eateries of all multicultural persuasions enjoying this music immensely. 

First published in Restaurant and Catering Magazine, September 2001