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Danilo Brito: Tiny Desk Concert

After four chords, the notes start to fly — Danilo Brito and his four collaborators, three Brazilians and one American, are off like jackrabbits in front of a hound, having hustled their instruments to the Tiny Desk at the end of a North American tour.

Brito a 32-year-old mandolin player, made his first record when he was a teenager, plays a type of music called choro (pronounced "shore-oo").

It's said that choro started in the streets and back yards and made its way to the concert hall. Brazilian musicians of all genres have drawn on choro, from popular composer Antonio Carlos Jobim to Heitor Villa Lobos, one of the giants of Latin American classical music. Its literal translation from the Portuguese is "to cry," but in Brito's dextrous hands a better translation may be "crying out to be heard."

You can hear Brito and his colleagues play their arrangement of Villa Lobos' "Melodia Sentimental," originally written for voice and orchestra, behind the Tiny Desk, but what you're actually hearing is a kind of formal Rodas de Choro, the circles of players who developed this music more than a century ago and have carried it on to the present.

Only — in the backyards, they don't wear suits and ties.


Danilo Brito
is available now. (iTunes)

Set List

  • "Sussuarana"
  • "Lamentos"
  • "Tica"
  • "Melodia Sentimental"
  • "Pega Ratão"
  • Musicians

    Danilo Brito (mandolin); Carlos Moura (7-string guitar); Guilherme Girardi (guitar); Lucas Arantes (cavaquinho); Brian Rice (pandeiro)


    Credits

    Producers: Tom Cole, Bronson Arcuri; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Director: Colin Marshall; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri, Colin Marshall; Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison; Photo: Ariel Zambelich/NPR.

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    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Tom Cole is a senior editor on NPR's Arts Desk. He develops, edits, produces, and reports on stories about art, culture, music, film, and theater for NPR's news magazines Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered. Cole has held these responsibilities since February 1990.