On Thanksgiving weekend several of New Orleans' finest musicians traveled to Natal, Brazil, to take part in the 4th Annual MPB Jazz Festival.  Natal ("Nativity"), also known as the City of Dunes, in the Northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, is the closest Brazilian capital to Africa and Europe.  Organized by Mitchell Player, Monica MacDowell, and Valeria Oliveira, this event is dedicated to fostering a musical and cultural exchange between two places that already share a great deal.  As Gerald French, the ensemble's drummer says:  "All of those rhythms emanate from the west coast of Africa...Ain't much difference...musically it's like a mirror image...Brazil is like the biggest 7th ward in the world."  The festival took place over four days and featured performances by Jewel Brown, Valeria Oliveira, Aurora Nealand, and Michaela Harrison, with the remarkable musicianship of Gerald French on drums, Mitchell Player on bass, Todd Duke on guitar, and Tom McDermott on piano and keyboards. 

     The concerts were held in four separate venues, each with its own unique splendor.  Valeria Oliveira and Candeeiro Jazz opened the festivities at the beautiful Teatro Riachuelo (inside a shopping center!), joined by Aurora Nealand, after which Jewel Brown, who toured with Louis Armstrong for 8 years in the 1960's, took the stage with French, Player, and Duke.  Valeria's set featured a hand-in-glove tightness, with Jubileu Filho, Sergio Groove, and Ze Hilton, the guitar/bass/accordion combo, meshing perfectly with Valeria, who allowed them their respective runs, infusing her spare, resonant vocals into the mix.  Then came New Orleans.  Gerald French's soulful singing roused the Natalese into the Crescent with a couple funky numbers, then Michaela Harrison brought it with beautiful renditions of "My Romance" and "Our Love Is Here To Stay."  Along came the inimitable Miss Jewel, whose sittin', standin', shakin', shimmyin', struttin' set brought the Brazilian audience to its feet.  "I was gonna do it slow but I think I'm gonna do it fast," she said, at the onset of "All Of Me." The Jewel glistened onstage, powering through "What A Difference A Day Makes", "Teach Me Tonight", "Bill Bailey", "St. Louis Woman", and closing with "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands", joined by Michaela and Aurora.  "Pop it, Baby, snap that thing, she exhorted to Player on the bass, while telling Duke "You be pluckin' that fiddle nice!"  Backstage, after the show, Miss Jewel, whose bon mots kept everyone in stitches throughout the weekend, said "Give me some of that stuff in the green can."  (Gerald French had turned her on to the magical Brazilian soda known as Guaraná.)  She held court with the press and fans in the dressing room, and on the way back to the hotel, offered another Jewelism:  "That bed's gonna love me." 

     The following afternoon Aurora Nealand and Tom McDermott conducted a workshop at the music school of the Federal University of Natal.  The students, after hearing Tom and Aurora open with one of their absurdly delicious duets, were understandably intimidated, and reluctant to even bring out their instruments, but gradually Aurora's gentle but firm coaxing drew the clarinets, saxes, and flutes out of their cases.  She and Tom played a recording of Sidney Bechet's "Maple Leaf Rag" to illustrate how swing found its way into jazz, and a Cottonmouth Kings cut gave the students a lesson in collective improvisation, with players playing "in the spaces between."  "The Battle of Jericho" was employed to nudge the students to try out countermelody, and by the end of the class, a confident, full-fledged jazz ensemble had sprung from what had begun as a sheepish gathering of tentative players. 

     That evening French, Player, and Duke knocked out one tune after another at a place that wouldn't be out of place in any New Orleans ward: Espaço Ruy Pereira, an alleyway in the Cidade Alta, in the old Centro, leading to a stage abutted by beer and tira gosto stands.  Metal tables filled with caipirinhas, ashtrays, and bottles of Original (a killer Brazilian brew); yellow chairs filled with locals.  Gerald French led the trio, playing drums and singing while simultaneously (and seamlessly) fastening a ride cymbal and high hat (both of which arrived late) to the kit.  Then Michaela Harrison, wowmeister that she is, did her wowing, anchored by Player and French and buoyed by Duke's searing solos.  The multigenerational, multiethnic, multikulti crowd went nuts, exhorting the band for "Mais um, mais um!"  The ensemble had come home.  Audience and band shared beers and hugs after the gig, then went off to club in the Ribeira neighborhood below, where Antonio de Padua and his group (featuring his precocious 11-year-old son on flute, dubbed by Aurora as "the mayor of Natal") snuck in, for the benefit of the New Orleanians, a samba-fied "Saints Go Marchin' In."  Antonio called up Aurora on (appropriately enough) "Isn't She Lovely" and "Tico Tico No Fuba."  His band sambaed, forroed, frevoed, jazzed and jived us until the van showed up to ferry everyone back to the hotel.  That night, on the rooftop, during the ritual cachaça gathering, Todd Duke performed a beautiful, spontaneous ode to the glories of chicken feet in Fat City.

     The next morning Aurora and Tom conducted another workshop with Banda de Acari, a philharmonic youth group from outside the capital.  Several hours later the New Orleans gang took to the Parque das Dunas, on an outdoor stage in the Bosque dos Namorados ("Forest of Lovers", a name which seems a bit redundant, since aren't all forests, after all...?)  Aurora enchanted the audience on clarinet, soprano sax and vocals, playing Jericho, Weary Blues, Bye and Bye, etc., along with couple French tunes and a rousing encore of "Just A Little While To Stay Here", all backed vigorously by Tom and Todd and Gerald and Mitchell.  Aurora generously invited Banda de Acari to play on "Bei Mir Bistu Shein", a tune they learned from her during the morning workshop, and Antonio de Padua stepped in and killed on trumpet on two of the tunes.  Alegria was the order of Day Three.

     On the final day the group got in a well-deserved visit to Ponta Negra beach, where Mitchell purchased a hammock from local legend José dos Redes ("Hammock Joe") who has patrolled this beach with his hand-sewn goods for a quarter-century ("This hammock comes with a 10-year warranty", he assured Mitchell, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek), while Michaela discovered the exotic secrets of the "Superunintoxicationer, Good for the Taste and Hair, known to Regulate Cholesterol and Glucose Tax."  (Don't ask, we're still figuring it out ourselves.)  Later that afternoon Michaela did a stirring performance at the newly restored Cidade da Crianca (City of the Child) on an amphitheater stage backed by a manmade lake.  Between songs, the transplanted baiana spoke to the audience in perfect Portuguese, while a balmy breeze rippled the water behind, knocking loose one of the pedal swan boats.  She and Todd and Gerald and Mitchell (with Valeria and Jubileu Filho sitting in) entranced the twilit audience with a sweet, eclectic set that ranged from a jazzy "Blue Moon" to a bluesy "Please Send Me Someone To Love" to a heartwrenching  "Throw It Away" to a soulful "Demain."  Her version of Nina Simone's "Four Women" left the audience spellbound.  She closed the MPB Jazz Festival with a rousing rendition of "Sunny," then tended to the adoring fans backstage, while Aurora and a certain OZ DJ bravely leaped over the guardrail onto the errant pedal boat, risking life and limb to commandeer the renegade fowl safely back to dock.  After dinner ("That sausage is good," said Miss Jewel, "I got no business eatin' it, but that sausage is good!") and farewells to the wonderful Brazilian staff* (which had kept everyone and everything afloat), the group got in the van and, tired and a bit loopy from the travel and the gigs, turned to talk of heading up to the hotel roof for that final bottle of cachaça.  Miss Jewel sang "Up on the Roof" interspersing it with a story about Satchmo at the Royal Hall in London, "callin' out all the old ladies."  Gerald kicked into "I lost my job but I don't care...the house burned down but I don't care..." and was joined in harmony by Todd and Aurora.  The boulevards of Christmastown were adorned with lavish lights for the season, and this ridiculous Brazilian city (Nativity scenes in supermarkets, plush theaters in shopping malls, Black Fridays without Thanksgiving, jet packs in the ocean, forrós in prison courtyards) had successfully hosted a bunch of ridiculous talents from New Orleans. The sea swallowed in darkness, the bottle polished off, and Natal in the rearview mirror, the group went on to Sao Paulo for a performance at the Bourbon St. Music Club.  Miss Jewel reminded everyone of what Pops used to say: "We're headin' for the Southland!"

     On January 3rd at Irvin Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse, Mitchell Player will be reuniting some of these musicians to kick in a campaign to bring this New Orleans-Natal connection to New Orleans in April.

     This past Saturday on Tudo Bem we featured, as a preview, a few live performances from the event.  This Sunday night from midnight-3AM CST on The Dean's List we'll have a full complement of the live shows, interspersed with interviews from the road.  Tune in!

     *Valeria, Monica, Claudio, Natalia, Camilla, Luzia, Carol, Hiago, Ana Carolina, Marina: Obrigadissimo!