Irrespective of how esteemed and fashionable a musician may be of their homeland, breaking into the U.S. market typically requires an insider to offer connections and open doorways.
San Francisco singer Sandy Cressman has performed that important function for the São Paulo mother-and-daughter staff of jazz pianist/composer Débora Gurgel and vocalist Dani Gurgel. Working behind the scenes, she’s paved the best way for a collection of Bay Space performances, introducing their opulently melodic music to new audiences.
Final February they performed a number of live shows across the area specializing in their ebook of small-group preparations for the Débora and Dani Gurgel Quarteto (DDG4). They’re returning this weekend for 3 live shows, a run anchored by a collaboration Friday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium with the Stanford Jazz Orchestra (which shall be live-streamed at music.stanford.edu/sjo_live).
Mike Galisatus, the Stanford Jazz Orchestra’s longtime director, was beginning to search for a visitor artist for the group’s fall live performance when Cressman contacted him about the potential for working with the Gurgels.
“I knew nothing about them,” he mentioned, however when he heard their good new album “DDG19 Big Band” he was instantly smitten. “Their music is incredible. I also checked them out online and the horn parts alone are incredible, really technically challenging, and the grooves are so great. So far, the Stanford band is doing a great job with them.”
The conductor and arranger of OBA, the orchestra of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Auditório Ibirapuera, and an everyday arranger for Orquestra Jazz Sinfônica and Orquestra Jovem Tom Jobim, Débora Gurgel is one among São Paulo’s busiest composers. She’s written songs for main Brazilian artists comparable to Chico Pinheiro, Joyce Moreno and Amilton Godoy, and the music she despatched to the Stanford Jazz Orchestra can be a heavy carry for a working skilled band.
The non-music majors who make up the SJO are used to plunging into deep musical waters. The ensemble companions with illustrious jazz artists yearly, and the 20-piece band’s upcoming collaborations at Bing Live performance Corridor function vocalists Jamie Davis and Clairdee (Feb. 21, 2025) and trombonist/vocalist Wycliffe Gordon (Could 23, 2025).
One requirement is that the visitor artists have already got a ebook of massive band preparations. The scholars embrace the problem, although the Gurgels’ music is taking them into notably demanding territory.
“It’s so rhythmically intricate,” Galisatus mentioned. “It’s hard enough for a small group, but then multiple that by 15 horn players trying to put every accent in the right place. The melodic lines, particularly for brass, are very difficult to navigate. Our trumpet players are tackling that right now, trying to make it sound real and authentic.”
A part of what units the Gurgels’ music aside is the best way that Dani’s vocals twist and soar over the ensemble. Just a few of the tunes function lyrics. More often than not “I’m scatting and we’re interacting in a way, but I’m still doing the lead melody on most of the songs,” she mentioned on a latest video name with Sandy Cressman.
“I feel like you’re the lead horn,” Cressman mentioned.
“My main inspiration is that I used to be a saxophone player,” Gurgel responded, noting that earlier than she discovered herself as a singer she performed a number of devices, together with bass and reeds.
Cressman, who has collaborated with a bevy of main Brazilian musicians over the previous twenty years, was a longtime fan of the Gurgels’ music when she first reached out to them in 2012 on the lookout for Dani’s lyrics for the music “Preto e Branco” (which options music by Portuguese jazz vocalist Sara Serpa). Natalie Cressman had transcribed the piece for her Manhattan College of Music senior recital in 2012.
Natalie Cressman, who just lately married her duo accomplice, Brazilian-born guitarist/composer Ian Faquini, contributed vocals on the DGG19 album monitor “Dá Licença,” one other tune of theirs she carried out at her senior recital. This weekend’s live performance will attain a brand new viewers “that we’re hoping to build on,” Gurgel mentioned. “This is our third time in the U.S. this year, and hopefully we can come a lot more.”
DANI & DÉBORA GURGEL
With Stanford Jazz Orchestra: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford College; $27 (free for Stanford college students); occasions.stanford.edu
Débora and Dani Gurgel Quarteto: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 16; the Sound Room, Oakland; $30; www.soundroom.org
