Here's a little clip of Austin's "escola de samba", Carnaval group, if you will, Acadêmicos da Ópera, in performance 13 Feb, 2010 at Ruta Maya in Austin. This is a smaller version of the group that will perform at Carnaval this coming Saturday when they will also be wearing what they promise to be spectacular costumes based on an outer space theme. Should be out of this world!
Time to start warming up for the year's best party!
Now less than 3 weeks till the best party in town explodes once more: Februrary 20!
Our first official Carnaval event takes place this Thursday Feb 4 at the recently remodeled Star Bar at 600 W. Sixth at Nueces from 6-8pm. Bacardi will be offering free Bacardi cocktails from 6-7pm, and members of Academicos da Opera will be on hand to heat things up with some great samba drumming. Bryan Beck from KGSR will be on hand to host and he'll be drawing names for free Carnaval tix, posters and some great big surprise stuff.
And then next week on Friday, February 12 we'll have another explosive pre-Carnaval party at Speakeasy, 412 Congress, from 7-9pm. Free Bacardi cocktails from 7-8pm with reduced price drinks all night, body painting, live samba with the drummers and dancers from Austin's samba school, Academicos da Opera beginning at 8pm. 101X will be on hand with lots of giveaways including tickets, posters and a grand prize package including tix, a gift certificate at a costume shop and a hotel room at Homestead Suites for Carnaval night! Drop by, wiggle your thang, and have a drink on Bacardi.
Carnaval is coming, it's only a month away. So, to get the mood going, I'm posting a link to six or seven streaming programs of Brazilian music originally broadcast on your Sambamaster's Internet radio program, Brazilian Wax which aired from Feb-June 2009. Sadly, the station dissolved, so the program did too. But we've saved a few for you to enjoy at your leisure. There is a very special two-hour tribute featuring a live recording of Paulinho da Viola in 1980 made by Mr. SambaMaster in São Paulo...this is an EXCLUSIVE recording. Enjoy....Aprovete!
I can’t go to Rio without at least one visit to the fabled Feira Hippie, Hippie Market, that takes place every Sunday in Ipanema’s Praça Osário. This arts and crafts fair, which started “back in the day”, now features mostly crappy jewelry made in China and ugly t-shirts imprinted in cheap plastic ink with recipes for caipirinhas, or the image of Corcovado, or the otherwise lovely stone-inlay pattern of the area’s beachfront sidewalks. No thanks.
But there are dozens of painters, some artists, some hacks, gathered at the center of the feira displaying their works--most reasonably priced, and most absolutely dreadful. Ok, not dreadful, but not to my taste. Lots of happy, dancing sambistas, baianas, Corocovados and favela paintings. Yeah, I want a painting of a cheerful slum in full-bore party mode. But there are two artists from whom I've bought in the past.
One dude, a total whack who I’ll save for another time, paints lots of flying saucers into his images of Ipanema and Leblon, and I LOVE them!
The other is a fellow named Sebastião Vitorino Nunes, known as Vitorino. I met Vitorino back in 1999 when I bought a very large piece of his, maybe four feet by three feet. It is his version of the samba school Mangueira whose colors are green and pink. His style, or maybe it’s a technique, consists of repeating a handful of silhouetted figures in row after row, graduating from small to smaller from bottom to top. Sometimes he varies the colors in the figures, though even then, adhering to a limited palette, and sometimes the variations only exist in the slightly different positions of arms, hands, hair.
In the Mangueira painting, the figures, about a third of whom are playing drums, are in straight lines, and rendered almost like gingerbread men, as is his style, in silhouette. They are against a shocking green background, wearing dark green shirts and pink trousers. There are at least 150 figures in the painting. Nice.
I resolved then to somehow get Vitorino to create a poster for the Carnaval party I’ve produced in Austin since 1978. I’ve only used two Brazilian artists in the past, the legendary Rede in 1985, and the master of xilogravura (wood block printing) from Pernambuco, Jota Borges, in 1994, and wanted to have another Brazilian-created work in the gallery of our posters. I discussed this with his wife at one point in 2000 or 2001, but, owing to the distance involved, and the fact that I had no way to look at proofs other than snail mail, I was dissuaded from pursuing this course.
Fast forward to 2009. On my recent visit to the Cidade Maravilhosa, I went to the feira twice. My first dip into that mayhem found Vitorino to be absent. Was he sick? Dead? Asleep? (His wife had told me on another trip that he tends to paint all night and sleep all day.) But interestingly, I saw more than a handful of what I’d call Vitorino imitators. Seems his style has caught on, and several painters were displaying inferior renditions of the Vitorino cookie-cutter technique. Yeah, mostly trash.
But on my second trip to the feira, I was delighted to find him, actually his wife, showing new works exhibiting his familiar style, but imbued with more colors than his paintings I’d seen previously. I immediately saw one I thought would work as a Carnaval poster. This time the figures represented female dancers, male drummers, male dancers; the work exploded with color, energy and Carnaval. I had to have it. We started negotiating and finally hit a price we both liked. She wrapped it up. It was canvas secured to wooden stretchers, so I carefully packaged it to carry on the plane beside me. No way I was going to check that precious parcel.
So, I finally have a Vitorino poster. It’s printed, and looks great. To preserve the integrity and vibrancy of the original colors, we chose to print it with two additional colors instead of the traditional simple cyan, magenta, yellow and black of four color offset. It has been worth the wait and the expense. The poster is amazing, and I’m happy to have another Brazilian represented in our collection, and certainly a true work of art. Thanks, Vitorino!
Can't believe there have been no entries since last February or so. Time flies....
It's been a busy year. Your SambaMaster went to Rio to check things out, heard lots of great music, lots of samba, ate way too much great food, and managed to find a wonderful piece of art for the 2010 Carnaval poster. It is by a terrific artist named Vitorino whose work I've admired since 1999. About that time I talked to him about doing a poster, but things just never worked out. Until this year when I saw one of his paintings, and instantly knew it would make a great poster. (here is the URL for my blog entry on finding the painting: http://sambamaster.blogspot.com/2009/10/home-again-home-again-not-quite.html )
Anyway, hope you like it. It is VERY different, for sure, but I just felt we needed a change, so we get a totally different, but very Brazilian style, and our first horizontal poster. It's for sale in the gallery, at Ana Brasil on Rockwood Lane, and will soon be at Waterloo Records and other places.
Am happy to report Grupo Saveiro or Beleza Brazil as they now like to be called, will be back, once again featuring the fantastically charismatic singer Marianne Ebert who was with the group this year. Should be a great performance now that she knows Austin is a serious party town. I think she was taken by surprise in 2009. Make her welcome again!
We'll have an even better light setup...this year was the best ever. We'll outdo that in '10!
And the Austin Samba School, Acadêmicos da Ópera will be back bigger and better as well...
Here is a report from the SchoolMaster, Mr. Jacare:
"We did our first, pan-Samba School run through last night and the show is really professional quality. We'll keep running twice through/rehearsal till C. Brasileiro. Your guests have never seen anything like this. Very exciting.
In addition, I have a guy from Stomp helping me with some new arrangements and in fleshing out the existing Bahian stuff. This guy was the go-to soloist on djembe in Stomp. "Monster" is not really sufficient to describe him. In addition, I have several ritimistas who have risen to leadership level. They circulate in the bateria, bringing the groove to a new level. The rehearsals are finally starting to be exactly like rehearsals in Brazil. I'm taking them to Rio in January so it's only going to get better.
All that to say that you are going to absolutely love the show this year. Space Opera. Get your jet pack out."
So, stay tuned for more developments. We'll announce a couple of pre-Carnaval events to help fill in the space between New Year's and our party. If you are not on the mailing list, sign up here: http://www.sambaparty.com/maillist/?p=subscribe
KGSR's morning host, Bryan Beck, was gracious enough to invite members of the Austin Samba School, Academicos da Opera, into the radio studio this morning to offer a little taste of what the group will be doing this Saturday at Carnaval. Bryan is a long-time Carnaval fan and has probably not missed a year since, what, 1987? Anyway, he always allows us to come into the station to promote the event and this year, the drummers appeared on his Sounds of Our Town segment.
Needless to say, they were wonderful. Director Robert Jacare Patterson was there, along with drummers Mike "The Don" Marchionetti, Spamapotomus (Tommy Spaminato), Lee "Chicken Legs" Clippard and Scott "BOOM BOOM" McClanahan. The sound was driving and full. So imagine what 40 of these guys playing samba sound like in person! Saturday is going to be amazing....and then there are the 40 dancers! Wow!
Thanks, guys, for coming out so early, at the tail end of that Winter Sto
rm!!!! And thanks Bryan Beck and KGSR for your more than 20 years of support!
Poster Signing Event at Sampaio's (plus Vicci and SAMPC photos)
Wow, we had a great time yesterday evening at Sampaio's. Poster artist AJ Garces came up from San Antonio to sign copies of his wonderful 2009 poster, 101X radio was there doing their "remote" thing giving away CDs, tshirts, Carnaval tix and posters and at least 100 folks showed up to enjoy the moment. Smiles were in evidence all evening, so it must have been a success. This is the seventh or eighth time we've done this and each year, it seems to just get better. Carnaval Queen Penny was there...without her, this thing would probably crumble into the sea...making sure all the eyes were dotted and tees crossed. Her right hand person Heather was there also, and we all had a great time recounting stories of Carnaval. Sampaio's folks were wonderful as always, the bartenders were swamped, but managed to pull it off with great finesse. Thanks to Magna and crew.
And thanks to all who showed up. Hope you had as much fun as we did!
We also want to thank Academicos da Opera for their participation in two other events, the Carnaval warmup at Vicci nightclub and at the opening of the now annual Carnaval Poster Show at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture a week ago. Carnaval Queen Penny took the photos of them that appear below.
Here are some more photos of the poster signing event, and the two of the Academicos da Opera:
