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Our season continues with a return engagement of sorts. Kenny Werner's trio inaugurated the RJA's concert season last fall with a scorching, sold-out performance that people still enthuse to us about a year later. This year, Kenny comes back to Fulkerson with a partner who'll ignite a different, but no less thrilling, sort of fireworks.
Deeply rooted in both Brazilian music (samba & batucada, bossa nova, MPB, and Brazilian jazz—think Egberto Gismonti, Flora Purim, Milton Nascimento) and American jazz (she studied with Sheila Jordan & Ray Brown, and has played and recorded with Toots Thielemans, Danny Gottlieb, Harvie Swartz, and Michael Brecker), Rio-born Claudia Villela has lived, worked, and recorded in the U.S. since 1984. DownBeat calls her a "thrilling improviser"; the New York Times gushes about her "remarkable, beautful, towering voice." Villela contacted Kenny Werner after reading his book, Effortless Mastery, and recognizing a kindred spirit, he accompanied her into the studio to record what SFJazz calls “one of the most transcendent CDs of 2004.”
We saw the two perform together in 2006 and were dazzled by Villela's five-octave range and her ingeniously percussive vocal gymnastics. She and Werner are improvisational soulmates, and their considerable talents and uncanny rapport guarantee a sublime evening of lyrical and sparkling duets.
More Information on Claudia Villela and Kenny Werner, including sound samples:
Tickets ($15 General
Admission, $10 Students & Seniors) are available here
at our website, or
(General Admission only) at The Metro and The Works.
Claudia Villela will also
present a FREE public master class entitled "Using Your Voice as a Percussion Instrument: Brazilian Mouth Batucada and Beyond" Saturday, October 20th at 11:00 a.m. in the Studio Theater (Theatre Arts Building Room 115) on
the HSU campus. |
