Bons Amigos

Album review

For Claudio Roditi's third Resonance album, he and label head George Klabin came up with a concept well within the trumpeter's comfort zone, turning to Brazilian jazz standards of the 1960s through the ‘80s, composed by the likes of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Toninho Horta, and Egberto Gismonti (plus more recent songwriters such as Eliane Elias), then mixing in a few of Roditi's originals. Since the 65-year-old was present at the creation of some of this music (he actually played in the horn section on the original recording of Gismonti's "O Sonho [The Dream]"), but has been an expatriate living in the U.S. since leaving Brazil in the early ‘70s, it's music with which he feels right at home. But complacency has not been allowed to set in. Roditi, playing his trademark rotary valve trumpet, flügelhorn, and, on his own "Piccolo Samba," a piccolo trumpet, is joined by Donald Vega (piano), Marco Panascia (bass), and Mauricio Zottarelli (drums), plus, on selected tracks, guitarist Romero Lubambo, and they make for an excellent Latin jazz ensemble. Roditi, a highly melodic and pleasant player, gets the lion's share of solos, of course, but Lubambo matches him on such tunes as Elias' "Para Nada [For Nothing]" and the title song (by Horta), but the others get their moments to shine, too. In his liner notes, Klabin complains that Roditi has been underrated and categorized as a Latin jazz player despite his talents as a straight-ahead jazz trumpeter. That may be so, but it's a difficult argument to make with an album as much devoted to Latin jazz as this one. Yet the Roditi original "Levitation," a hard bop number with little Latin feel, justifies Klabin's claim in spades, confirming this veteran's bona fides as a jazz soloist without qualifiers.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo