As has happened so often in the past, Berkeley is ahead of the cultural curve.
Choro, an instrumental Brazilian tradition that was among the first New World musical styles to combine European instrumentation with African rhythms, has found new audiences in recent years far from South America. It’s a playful, virtuosic idiom that’s also shared in community jam sessions by way of a century-deep repertoire of standards.
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Meanwhile, the most conspicuous manifestation of this growing musical movement returns with the 10th Berkeley Festival of Choro April 17-20.
Produced by flutist Jane Lenoir and percussionist Brian Rice, half of the Berkeley Choro Ensemble, the festival focuses on bringing the finest musicians from Brazil to the Bay Area. This year’s roster introduces some of the most accomplished women in the genre April 18 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Albany.
The concert features a quartet with São Paulo-reared Clarice Cast, a Grammy-nominated percussionist based in Los Angeles. Two other members, saxophonist/flutist Daniela Spielmann, a renowned choro artist since the late 1990s, and pianist Sheila Zagury, a leading choro scholar, forged close creative ties while performing together over two decades in a Rio de Janeiro-based duo. Rounding out the foursome is well-traveled Boston cellist Catherine Bent, who has carved out a role for an instrument not associated with choro.
“This has always been our primary goal, to bring Brazilian choro musicians to the Bay Area and have them perform at our concerts, workshops and rodas,” said Lenoir, pronouncing the term for a jam-session-in-a-circle as “ho-da,” a la Brazilian Portuguese. Choro is pronounced with a soft ch, more like shoro.
“Catherine isn’t Brazilian, but she’s one of the great innovators, a world-class cellist who plays with everyone,” Lenoir said.
The festival kicks off April 17 at Berkeley’s Hillside Club with a free concert featuring public school students from Oakland, Berkeley and Piedmont who study choro with reed player Zack Pitt-Smith (a founding member of another excellent East Bay Brazilian music combo, Grupo Falso Baiano). Following the youth concert, the festival’s guest artists join the circle for a community roda de choro that’s open to local musicians.
In its first foray to the South Bay, the festival concludes April 20 at Orange Music Studio in San José with a concert by the guest quartet and a roda de choro led by the artists.
“It says something to us about how popular choro is that we’re presenting the finale in San Jose,” Lenoir said. “For years all of our events were up here, and I’m so happy the scene has grown so much.”
In the South Bay, choro has friends in high places. The Orange Music Studio event is co-presented by the San Jose Choro Club, which was launched by flutist Kim Walesh, who has thrown herself into musical pursuits since retiring as San José’s deputy city manager, and Mark Dinan, recently elected vice-mayor of East Palo Alto.
Walesh got turned onto Brazilian music playing samba percussion with Bloco do Sol San José on Mexican Heritage Plaza. She fell in love with the powerful Afro-Brazilian rhythms, but ravishing Brazilian melodies caught her ear while attending California Brazil Camp in Cazadero when she came across a roda.
Picking up her flute for the first time since high school, she waded into the world of choro, studying with flutist and Brazilian music devotee Rebecca Kleinmann and Rio-born guitarist Ricardo Peixoto (the sole Brazilian member of the Berkeley Choro Ensemble).
Attending two of the summer music programs devoted to the style, Choro Camp New England at Smith College and Centrum Choro Northwest Camp in Port Townsend, Washington, Walesh took the full plunge, studying with Israeli clarinet star and renowned Brazilophile Anat Cohen and Daniela Spielmann, the Brazilian flutist and saxophonist featured at the Berkeley Festival of Choro.
“The way you learn is playing in a roda, a circle, seeing how the melody is passed from player to player,” Walesh said. “You get to understand chord progressions and learn when it’s an appropriate time for improvising.”
After several years of commuting to the East Bay for rodas, Walesh teamed up with Mark Dinan at the end of 2023 to start a San Jose session. Meeting the last Sunday of the month, the rodas draw between 10 to 30 people, some of whom are “coming from Berkeley, San Francisco and Monterey to play,” she said.
“Some are jazz players who like the structures and melodies. Other are like me, classically trained, used to reading notes. Everybody loves the tunes, these beautiful choro standards.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
FESTIVAL OF CHORO
Student Ensemble and Community Roda: 7:30 p.m. April 17 at Hillside Club, Berkeley; free
Women in Brazilian Music: 7:30 p.m. April 18 at St. Albans Episcopal Church, in Albany; $35; www.berkeleychoro.com
Grand finale: 3 p.m. April 20 at Orange Music Studio, San José; $25-$35
Tickets and more information: www.berkeleychoro.com
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