Fry to the moon and other stories

Whatever happened to Bong Peñera and the Batucada? The foremost exponent of Pinoy samba and bossa nova, a little Brazil transplanted to Manila, hit its heyday in the latter part of the ’70s, close on the heels of another jazz phenomenon that took the music world by storm, Eumir Deodato.

Peñera offered a welcome change of pace to the largely chaotic and disjointed Pinoy rock scene at the time, and along with guitarist Eddie Munji and the late Lito Molina, spearheaded a nascent local awareness of the subtleties of jazz.

I remember once having sold out my quota of tickets to an old friend from the UP Village basketball playground, whose barkada were all Batucada fanatics in search of a wayward scalper at the since demolished UP Theater in the late ’70s.

And though Nandy, who bought the tickets wholesale, is still very much around, Peñera, wherever he is in semi-hibernation, could only be too happy with the recent developments in the local Candid catalogue, what with releases focusing on the Brazilian and light jazz side of things.

Aside from Monica Vasconcelos and her band Nois (not Noir, though her music is closer to film than noise), subsequent CDs sent to this corner are Jim Tomlinson’s Brazilian Sketches and Stacey Kent’s In Love Again. Now if that double-barreled combine doesn’t put you in a mellow tone, I don’t know what will.

Saxophonist Tomlinson and singer Kent are actually hubby and wife, and so they more than help each other out in their projects. In fact, Brazilian Sketches and In Love Again can be regarded as a double album of sorts if listened to in tandem; so complementary are they to each other.

Sketches on the whole is Tomlinson’s aural tribute to the music that shaped his saxophone sound, a salute in particular to Antonio Carlos Jobim, genius of the one-note samba and husband of the singer Astrud Gilberto, whose Girl from Ipanema forever changed our conception of "a girl we saw walking by."

Tomlinson states flat out that when he was starting as a musician, he bought every album with a saxophone on its cover. He also cites as a specific influence Stan Getz, the late master of cool sax.

In Sketches, Kent provides ample vocal support in four cuts – So Nice, the Cole Porter song I Concentrate on You, The Gentle Rain and Dreamer. While this may not exactly be lounge music, you can well imagine these songs played with muffled conversation in the background and cigarette smoke wafting to the blues ether.

The rest of the band, including guitarist Colin Oxley, bassist Simon Thorpe and pianist David Newton, adeptly leave enough space for the music to grow on the listener. Everyone here has a light touch, barely skimming the surface, that it would need a little care and patience to best appreciate the nuances at hand.

In Kent’s In Love Again, the singer focuses on the music of Richard Rodgers, songs from a bygone age transposed to a more contemporary urban setting. But while previous CDs like Linda Ronstadt’s collaborations with Nelson Riddle were unabashed exercises in retro, Kent’s reading of the past transcends mere deja vu and is able to occupy a separate, parallel plane in the scheme of heartbreaks and survival.

The novelist and Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) wrote the liner notes for In Love Again, and rightfully detects an absence of bitterness in the voice of Kent, unlike the chanteuses of old or even some of her contemporaries.

Wrote Ishiguro: "But what’s curious and unique in these exquisitely rendered ballads (and what makes her distinct from Billie Holiday, say, or that other fine singer of her generation, Diana Krall) is the absence of bitterness. What we get is someone going over the broken pieces of her life, trying to coax from somewhere a little courage and perspective."

Not only is that music review worthy of another Booker, but it also hits the nail right on the head, and makes us feel somewhat like artists in a floating world while listening to Kent as she regales us with Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Bali Hai and I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair, among other tunes from time past culled from soundtracks which our grandfolks would be more familiar with.

Through it all Kent imbues the proceedings with her quiet, shimmering presence. Personnel on both albums are identical, save for the drummer, which on Sketches is Chris Wells, and on In Love is Jasper Kviberg.

With such a sexy ensemble round, who will miss Batucada? (Save for the incontrovertible fact that live music is better).