Recognized in his homeland as the quintessential musician's musician, Vinicius Cantuária achieved his respected position in Brazilian music as a singer, guitarist, and percussionist, and by writing hit tunes for Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, and Gilberto Gil. Cantuária penned Veloso's first million-selling hit, "Lua e Estrela", which is etched in the hearts of Brazilian music fans all over the world. With the release of Tucumă, his debut recording for Verve, Cantuária pioneers an exiciting new post-bossa music that is faithful to time-honored Brazilian traditions of melody and rhythm while introducing cutting-edge elements of sampling, ambient minimalism, jazz horns, and string arrangements. The multifaceted Cantuária also adds percussion, piano, keyboards, and Indian wood flute to his instrumental arsenal on Tucumă. Now based in New York, he is joined on this breakthrough recording by an all-star group of eclectic artists who share his sense of musical adventure, including Bill Frisell, Sean Lennon, Laurie Anderson, Arto Lindsay, Joey Baron, and Nana Vasconcelos.

"Tucumă is totally fresh and totally different in its approach to melody, rhythm, and orchestration," Cantuária says. "When I invite people like Bill Frisell and Sean Lennon to play with me, it moves the music in different directions and something new happens. To me, this album is like jazz, because there are no rules. There's a jazz attitude, with a Brazilian style. You can listen to a given song and not feel its' particularly Brazilian. But the whole album definitely is."

Cantuária has often cited Antonio Carlos Jobim, the archetypal Brazilian bossa nova composer, as his primary inspiration. But he also grew up a generation removed from his idol, and like many Brazilian teens, listened as much to American rock'n'roll as to the music of his homeland. At eighteen, Cantuária played in the Byrds- and Crosby, Stills & Nash-influenced folk-rock band Terco. But rather than stay with that group as it veered into heavier sounds, Cantuária affiliated himself with the burgeoning rock-influenced tropicalia Brazilian pop movement of Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil. Younger than the others, Cantuária brought fresh energy and ideas to tropicalia, composing popular tunes for his musical compatriots.

Ever restless on the path of innovation, however, Cantuária set hits sights on new horizons. "My music needs change," he says, "it needs to talk to new people, to be free to experiment." Shortly after moving to New York, Cantuária recorded his US debut for the Gramavision label, Sol Na Cara, co-produced by another Brazilian-rooted experiment, New York avant-garde veteran Arto Lindsay. Impressed by the subtlety of his quietly radical music, New York Times critic Jon Pareles hailed the charismatic Cantuária as a musician "confident enough to choose understatement."

In addition to recording his solo albums Sol Na Cara and Tucumă, Cantuária has also appeared on two tracks of the best-selling Verve/Antilles benefit album, Red Hot + Rio, as well as the Verve soundtrack to Next Stop Wonderland. On the New York music scene he has worked with Arto Lindsay, DJ Spooky, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Sean Lennon; and in his own trio with trumpeter Michael Leonhart and percussion wizard Vasconcelos. "New York has been great for me," Cantuária says. "If I came to New York as a painter, I would paint different colors than before. Yet it also makes me be more myself - more Brazilian. At home in Brazil I can lose my focus and get preoccupied with cellular phones, television, and all the distractions of modern technology. But in the United States, I get homesick and am inspired to make music that is even more Brazilian. You could say that I become more Brazilian when I'm away from Brazil."

With deep roots in the bossa nova tradition, Tucumă is both his most ambitious and his most definitive musical statement to date. Cantuária composed nine of Tucumă's  eleven tunes (co-writing two with Arto Lindsay and one with Caetano Veloso), including "Pra Gil", dedicated to Brazilian pop legend and sometime collaborator Gilberto Gil. He also performs Veloso's "Jóia" and Alcides Dias Lopes's "Vivo Isolado do Mundo". Each performance hinges on Cantuária's precise guitar work and seductive Portuguese vocals, and assumes a distinct character by virtue of unique arrangements and stellar guest appearances. "For this album I could invite a greater number of people to play with me," Cantuária says. "That always opens up your music."

This synergy between tradition and innovation is evident as cellist Erik Friedlander weaves haunting textural undercurrents into six pieces, Lennon plays bass on three numbers, and Lindsay also provides English translations to the lyrics in the liner notes. From the elegant interlacing of his own acoustic guitar with the characteristically swooning tone of Bill Frisell's electric guitar on the opener, "Amor Brasileiro", through Laurie Anderson's idiosyncratic vocals and violin playing on "Retirante", Cantuária's creative interactions with his brilliant collaborators make Tucumă a genuinely groundbreaking album.

Named for a tropical fruit indigenous to Brazil, Tucumă is beguiling and sophisticated hybrid, at once passionate and gentle, immediately accessible in its sweet, melancholy-tinged melodies, and ripe with the possibilities of the future. Arriving at a time when Brazilian music is riding a new crest of popularity, Tucumă steers bossa nova into the hippest current of contemporary music while maintaining a reverence for its roots. It signals the full artistic blossoming of Vinicius Cantuária as he defines the new wave of bossa nova.

Tucumă (314 559 863-2)  Produced by Hans Wendl, Soli and Vinicius Cantuária

SOLO DISCOGRAPHY

Tucumă - Verve/Polygram, 1999
Amor Brasileiro - For Life, 1998 (Japan only)
Sol Na Cara - For Life/Gramavision, 1996
Rio Negro - Chorus Son Livre, 1992
Nu Brasil - EMI/Brazil, 1987
Siga-me - EMI/Brazil, 1986
Sutís Diferenças - EMI/Brazil, 1985
Gávea De Manhă - BMG/Ariola, 1984
Vinicius Cantuária - BMG/Ariola, 1983

Biography courtesy of Music and Art Management
245 West 14th Street #2rc, New York, NY 10011 (USA)
tel. +1 212 8071950, fax +1 212 8071952, e-mail: musicart@interport.net