Verequete & Grupo Uirapuru - Carimbo: Dance Music From Para Amazonia - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Havens album Something Else Again, deals primarily with social issues rather than relationships. It was another charting record for Havens, reaching #184 on Billboard's Pop Albums. More than mere albums, Mixed Bag and Something Else Again were signposts for a rapidly changing culture, leading the way to a more enlightened existence.

Virtuoso duo Sándor Rigó and Christina Leeb-Grill have taken Jean Françaix's description of his own work, 'musique pour faire plaisir', as the motto for this program. Dance styles and rhythms are at the heart of this repertoire, from the spectacular Brazileira with which Milhaud concludes his theatrical Scaramouche, through Piazzolla's refinement of tradition in his Tango-Études, to the Brazilian rhythms showcased in Villa-Lobos's Fantasia. Paquito D'Rivera adapted his Invitaciónal Danzón especially for this recording, providing Sándor Rigó with space to demonstrate his brilliance in improvisation.

This recital offers a kaleidoscopic array of styles unified by South America's national instrument, the guitar. Titans of Latin American music such as Piazzolla and Barrios Mangoré are represented, but so too are distinctive composers less well known outside of their own countries. Genres such as milonga, Venezuelan waltz and choro are featured, in music suffused with lyrics melancholy and vivacious, biting rhythms. 'His musicianship is unimpeachable, his fleet technique is world-class' wrote American Record Guide of Graham Anthony Devine (8.554195).