Alex Hamburger - Catalog of Dreams - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

For the past six years, flutist Alex Hamburger and pianist Jose Luiz Martins have been the heartbeat of each others' musical worlds. Now, with their debut record as a duo, the husband and wife create a shared world, offering listeners a highly personal, textural immersion into the sonic catalog of their journey.The two musical prodigies were originally on divergent paths when they first met in 2018 during coincidental time abroad in Basel, Switzerland. Hamburger, originally from the Washington, D.C. metro area, was living previously in New York City, while Martins was studying for a masters in Basel after leaving his hometown of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Their first shared notes snapped their lives together, ushering in an instant connection and understanding, both about the music that influenced them and the music they wished to put in the world.Together, the partners found a deeply rooted shared commitment to using space, listening, and empathetic reaction to dive into the unknown and return with beauty and compassion. Now living together in Hyattsville, Md., Hamburger and Martins recorded Catalog of Dreams in 2025 as a response to the diverse range of musical traditions that shaped them, both as individuals and as a pair. Six of the album's eight songs are unique reinterpretations of traditional and modern classics from composers such as Herb Ellis, Wayne Shorter, and Thundercat. The duo then flexes the intimate dynamics and texture of piano, voice, flute, and electronic keyboards to reinterpret the compositions into vehicles for new dreams and possibilities.Of course, the most noticeable influence on the album is that of Brazilian music, which native Paulistano Martins brought to the record (and the relationship) from the very beginning. Three tunes make this connection explicit Gilberto Gil's classic 'Ladeira da Preguica' (made famous by Elis Regina), Airto Moreira's e