2006 - 2007 - 2008 - GAL COSTA - Blue Note - New York

 

Blue Note New York

Remembering a legend:

 

Gal Costa 💙 

An icon of tropicália, Gal Costa was a legendary Bossa Nova singer. 

She recorded Gal Costa, Live at the Blue Note in 2006. 

We are honored to have been part of her contributions to jazz and we send our condolences to her family.

9/11/2022

16, 17, 18, 19, 20 e 21 de maio de 2006

Blue Note

16/5/2006 - The Brazilian singer Gal Costa at the Blue Note on Tuesday night

 Photo: Rahav Segev / The New York Times

30/9/2008 - Gal Costa e Romero Lubambo
 
Foto: Michelle V. Agins / The New York Times

May 18, 2006

Ben Ratliff

  

POP REVIEW | GAL COSTA

Gal Costa Sings Bossa Nova at the Blue Note

May 18, 2006

Ben Ratliff

The Brazilian singer Gal Costa came to the Blue Note this week with a small band and did what great, experienced pop singers often promise to do but rarely pull off: she rescaled her performance to jazz-club dimensions. Her opening set on Tuesday was like one long, well-balanced exhalation, warm and quiet and cathartic. She had a sound in mind and got to the point.

For the most part she chose the comfort of a bossa nova repertory that slightly predated her own career — which began in the mid-1960's — but that she has gracefully inherited, mostly songs associated with the twin powerhouses of Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto. They are famously subtle, but their secrets remain pretty open: they have gorgeous moving harmonies, and they are lavish with a rhythm that pulsates beneath the surface. 

Ms. Costa met their demands. Her voice has minimal vibrato and a little bit of Billie Holiday's midregister honk; it has thickened slightly over the years, and she favors the full, true, airy note, held just long enough for its significance to settle in. 

Taking the idea of jazz-club music seriously — she usually plays bigger concerts on the rare occasions that she comes here — Ms. Costa and her four-piece band revealed bossa nova in its old, first-wave style. Marcus Teixeira played Gilberto-like guitar chords and asymmetrical rhythms. Zé Canuto wound counterpoint passages on alto saxophone and flute around Ms. Costa's vocal lines. The drummer Jurim Moreira played Brazilian rhythms with hands and brushes on a minimal kit, occasionally giving the bass drum a hard, resonant kick to insinuate the low beat of the surdo drum in samba.

The band's sound also benefited from an acoustic bass, or something close, anyway, played by Adriano Giffoni: it was a fretless semi-acoustic upright. All this was a relief. Ms. Costa had the courage to use simple ingredients. 

Of the Jobim repertory, she knocked off several of the big ones: "Fotografia," "Desafinado," "Chega de Saudade," "Vou Te Contar," "Corcovado" and "Garota de Ipanema." She sang "I Fall in Love Too Easily" demonstrating that she had put in some hard listening to Chet Baker's version; she also sang "As Time Goes By" and three songs from the 1930's and 1940's by Ary Barroso, including the devastating "Prá Machucar Meu Coração".

Ms. Costa gave just enough of herself. She began the set warily, and her first few songs were tentative. Then she consolidated her strengths and everything clicked. Her stagecraft, which here wasn't much more than a natural, sexy-maternal manner of moving, smiling and serially locking eyes with front-row patrons, was fully on. She owned the music, easily and contentedly.

São Paulo, sexta-feira, 28 de setembro de 2007 

  

Com standards, Gal Costa reafirma condição de diva

Repertório de CD ao vivo se concentra em Tom Jobim com arranjo renovador

LUIZ FERNANDO VIANNA
Da sucursal do Rio de Janeiro

 

Gal Costa vem se equilibrando entre dois pólos: renovar o repertório de vez em quando, como fez no disco de inéditas "Hoje" (2005), e reafirmar seu posto de diva, interpretando clássicos da música brasileira. É neste segundo pólo que se encaixa "Gal Costa Live at the Blue Note", que chega aqui depois de ser lançado nos EUA. 

Para os norte-americanos e brasileiros que estavam em 19 de maio do ano passado na mais famosa casa de jazz nova-iorquina, deve ter sido prazeroso reencontrar em voz tão perfeita as jobinianas "Desafinado", "Chega de Saudade", "Corcovado" e "Wave" -não faltou nem "Garota de Ipanema". 

Já para ouvidos nacionais que vivem no Brasil, o repertório é mais do mesmo, no sentido de que só tem standards gravados e regravados à mancheia. O que soa mais renovador é a formação intimista que acompanha a cantora: violão (Marcus Teixeira), baixo (Adriano Giffoni), bateria (Jurim Moreira), sax e flauta (Zé Canuto). 

É muito bom ouvir Gal sem que ela tenha por trás uma orquestra ou vários instrumentos elétricos e percussões. Sua voz esquece os extremos -o agudo final de "Ave Maria do Morro" (Herivelto Martins) é uma exceção- e as interpretações cobrem as músicas de um veludo muito agradável. É claro que também contribui para isso a grande intimidade de Gal com o repertório.  

"Triste" com suingue 

Das 19 músicas, nove são de Tom Jobim, de quem ela é uma antiga e exímia intérprete. Vale destacar "Fotografia", que abre o show indicando o clima que ele terá, e "Triste", que ganha uma versão mais sacudida do que as habituais, com muito suingue. 

Entre as de Ary Barroso, a seqüência de "Camisa Amarela" -com intervalos muito bem marcados pelo sax- e "Pra Machucar o Coração" ("devastadora", segundo o texto do crítico Ben Ratliff, do "New York Times", que consta do encarte), forma o melhor momento da apresentação. Já o encerramento com "Aquarela do Brasil" é um pouco para-gringo-ver, com um arranjo não muito inventivo. 

Outro grande momento é "Nada Além", o fox de Custódio Mesquita e Mário Lago que é cantado por Gal com o acompanhamento apenas do baixo e de estalos de dedos.

Antes da moça de Ipanema, ela reverencia com adequada suavidade o outro bairro carioca conhecido internacionalmente em "Sábado em Copacabana", de Dorival Caymmi, e "Copacabana" (João de Barro/Alberto Ribeiro). 

Gal ainda se lança em standards norte-americanos: muito bem em "I Fall in Love Too Easily", reverência a seu ídolo Chet Baker, e sem injetar muita vida nova em "As Time Goes By", o tema de "Casablanca". O CD confirma que, embora não precise ser seu único, o papel de diva cai bem na Gal de hoje.

 

 

 

MUSIC REVIEW | GAL COSTA

On a Visit From Brazil, a Certain Vowel in Tow

Gal Costa and Romero Lubambo performing at the Blue Note

Foto: Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Oct 1, 2008

Ben Ratliff

Whenever Gal Costa draws out a flat “a” at the end of a Portuguese word, she wins. She can do this as much as she wants, and it always works. She doesn’t use it showily; she’s in her early 60s now, and her voice has become darker and softer. But the corners of her mouth widen so that you can see her back teeth, her tone dramatically brightens, and suddenly what was language becomes purely sound. 

Halfway through her first set at the Blue Note on Tuesday, where she plays through the week with only the guitarist Romero Lubambo accompanying her, she sang a version of Caetano Veloso’s “Lindeza". It’s a love song without a specific object - maybe just the idea of beauty itself - and as she sang the opening line “coisa linda” (“beautiful thing”), she won twice. After that came “louca,” “boca,” “acreditar,” and then, a bit later, the line she had clearly been waiting for: in a downward stepwise melody, “lua lua lua lua.” It meant “moon,” four times, but it was as if she had cracked open the word, had thrown away the shell of meaning and had shown us the viscous stuff inside it. 

Singing this particular vowel pulls her face into a smile, and that was good too because Ms. Costa seemed otherwise preoccupied and slightly downcast between songs. For someone who clearly cares about sound, she had reason to be anxious: a show this intimate was an experiment. 

In her American appearances over the last several years she has compressed her performance style: big concerts have given way to appearances with a small jazzlike ensemble, and now, unprecedentedly, this. In the set’s ballads, and in bossa novas done the right way - as miniaturized adaptations of percussive samba, with strong and subtle swing - there was a great deal of intricacy. She’ll need the week to get used to the room and to Mr. Lubambo, with whom she hasn’t played much in the past. 

But the signs are promising. Ms. Costa has chosen some of the most durable songs from Brazilian popular music - songs by Chico Buarque, Antonio Carlos Jobím, Ary Barroso and Mr. Veloso, among others. (“The Girl From Ipanema” was among them, delivered half in Portuguese and half, unnecessarily, in English.) For his part, Mr. Lubambo was working hard. A highly fluent guitarist with a lot of jazz knowledge but enough taste to leave bossa novas uncluttered, he brought his own remarkable introductions and arrangements of Jobím’s “Wave” and Barroso’s “Aquarela do Brasil.” At the best points of the set they both gave off an intense affection for the songs, and you could grasp it more clearly without other musicians around them.  

Gal Costa and Romero Lubambo will perform through Sunday at the Blue Note, 131 West 3rd Street, West Village, bluenote.net.

Gal Costa é elogiada pelo New York Times

02/10/2008 

Gal Costa faz shows em Nova York nesta semana e recebe elogios

O "New York Times" elogiou em sua edição desta quinta-feira a apresentação que a cantora Gal Costa fez na casa de shows Blue Note na noite da última terça (30/9).

Segundo o crítico Ben Ratliff, a voz da cantora está mais "sombria e suave". A entonação da cantora "brilha dramaticamente e, de repente, a linguagem se torna puro som", escreveu ele.

São Paulo, sexta-feira, 03 de outubro de 2008 

"New York Times" elogia show de Gal Costa

DA REPORTAGEM LOCAL

O jornal "The New York Times" fez uma crítica elogiosa à cantora Gal Costa, sobre sua performance da última terça-feira no Blue Note, conceituado clube de jazz no West Village, acompanhada por Romero Lubambo. O "NYT" diz que sua voz se tornou "profunda e suave" com a idade e que os tons que alcança são "dramaticamente brilhantes" transformando o que era "linguagem em puro som". 

A crítica diz que a cantora parecia preocupada entre uma canção e outra, mas ela tinha razões para isso, pois "um show tão íntimo como esse é um experimento". Gal Costa fica em cartaz até domingo em NY.