I was delighted to learn that the previous release from the multi-faceted Elias – Mirror, Mirror with Chick Corea and Chucho Valdes (which I reviewed with enthusiasm at the beginning of 2022) – had won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album. I’d be surprised if Quietude didn’t do equally well.
Mirror, Mirror was a voiceless, all-piano affair. The bossa-nova fuelled Quietude has some diversely smoking piano from Elias: hear This Love I’ve Found, I Really Samba, Little Paper Ball and No More Fighting. But the beautifully voiced, laid-back yet rhythmically enticing programme mostly has acoustic guitar to the fore, from Marcus Teixeira and Lula Galvão, two of the finest contemporary exponents of the instrument.
The previously unissued, bright and breezy Tim-Tim For Tim-Tim from 2013 features Oscar Castro-Neves, the late bossa maestro who toured with Stan Getz, became a genre-crossing member of the world-ranging Paul Winter Consort and was a close and long-time Elias colleague.
The songs featured all have some special meaning for Elias. Now intimately floated, now rhythmically on the button, her engaging vocals (all in Portuguese) are as harmonically subtle as they are dynamically and emotionally adroit. They do freshly rendered justice to superb pieces by, e.g., Antonio Carlos Jobim (This Love) and Roberto Carlos (Look).
As mellow and reflective as it is upbeat and joyous, the whole programme compels, but if you’d like to sample, try the infectious Bahia Medley and the concluding Saveiros (Sloops), a rubato plea and song of gratitude for a safe return of fishermen from their work at sea. If this soul-soaked sequential duet from Elias and the Brazilian luminary Dori Caymmi, son of Dorival Caymmi, doesn’t touch your tear ducts, nothing will.
Discography
(1) You and I; Marina; Bahia With H; This Love That I’ve Found; Look; Bahia Medley; I Really Samba; Little Paper Ball; (3) Tim-Tim For Tim-Tim; No More Fighting; (2) Saveiros (41.36)
(1) Elias (p, v) with, collectively: Marcus Teixeira, Lula Galvão, Oscar Castro-Neves (g); Marc Johnson (b); Celso de Almeida (d); Paolo Braga (d, pc); Emilio Matins (pc). Sao Paolo and New York, c. 2021. (2) as (1) plus Dori Caymmi (v). (3) no detail, 2013.
Candid Records CCD30512
