I’ve played alongside Luiz for many years now in Alvorada. One of my biggest joys in that band has been seeing Luiz develop as a composer. He is totally dedicated to his craft, and has continued to produce more and more ambitious compositions and arrangements. I’m delighted therefore that he’s invited me to play on this new project, a set of big band music on which he’s been working now for some time. This gig, on Sunday 27th April lunchtime at Pizza Express Dean Street, will be the first outing for this new repertoire, and I’m really looking forward to it. Luiz deserves a lot more recognition for his great music!
Two Alvorada dates coming up soon. On Saturday 18th November we’ll be playing a free stage show at the Clore Ballroom in the South Bank Centre, as part of the Sounds of Brazil day in the London Jazz Festival.
Then on Thursday 23rd Novmber we’ll be back at our favourite haunt, The Harrison in Kings Cross, to play an intimate basement set with special guest Gian Correa, who is over visiting from São Paulo. Gian is part of a new generation of young choro musicians, taking the music in a contemporary and modern direction. He’s a brilliant seven string guitar player, and also a fantastic composer. We’ll be playing some of his tunes on the night.
Alvorada will be playing at Pizza Express Jazz Club as part of the London Latin Jazz Festival, on Tuesday 17th October. We’ll be collaborating for the first time with pianist Elizabeth Fadel, and infectious and vibrant musician from Curitiba, now based in Rotterdam. It’ll also be our first show with new percussionist Andres Ticino. It’s the opening night of the festival and promises to be a great night.
Coming up on Sunday 1st October, London Vocal Project are back at Pizza Express Jazz Club to continue our ongoing residency. We’ll be presenting our James Taylor Songbook Repertoire in its entirety, and furthermore the gig will be recorded live, to be released as an album later on. Join us to be part of the atmosphere as the moment is captured….
Heading to Manchester’s Stoller Hall on Sunday 11th June for a concert with London Vocal Project and The Printmakers. This project is titled The Many Voices of Eve, with a focus on female composers and songwriters. Amazing line up in the band – Norma Winstone, Nikki Iles, Mark Lockheart, Mike Walker, Steve Watts and James Maddren. It will be a gorgeous set of music. And really looking forward to finally doing it, after this concert was postponed from last year!
Some Alvorada dates coming up soon…On Friday 10th March we’ll be heading back to one of our favourite venues, Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham. Then on Tuesday 14th March we’ll be playing a free concert at City University, London.
Following these, we’ll present a special concert on Wednesday 26th April at SOAS, playing a set of music dedicated to the godfather of choro, Pixinguinha. It takes place just a few days after the Pixinguinha’s birthday, April 23rd, which is now the National Day of Choro in Brazil. We’ll be playing some famous and lesser known Pixinguinha choros, in classic form and in new arrangements which we’ve created especially. We’ve also invited special guest bandolim player Marco Ruviaro to join us for the occasion. The concert is part of La Linea – The London Latin Music Festival.
In the second half of 2022 I was remiss in not updating this website as usual… So here’s a round of up some of the highlights.
It was another busy year for Alvorada. We played various gigs including at some of our favourite venues, including Pizza Express Live, Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham and The Harrison. In June we had the pleasure of inviting Alessandro Penezzi – an amazing seven string guitarist virtuoso who I first met in Brazil in 2014 – to join us as our special guest at The Harrison. We ran a fun series of ‘Baile do Alvorada’ gigs, creating a more lively ‘gafieira’ vibe and featuring guests including Aleh Ferreira, Rogerio Botter Maio, Heidi Vogel, Inês Loubet and Carolina Lelis. We finished the year by going into the studio to record our second album – a whole collection of Alvorada originals that we’re very excited to have put together.
London Vocal Project continued our residency at Pizza Express Jazz Club with five gigs across the year showcasing our amazing variety of projects. These included our James Taylor Songbook Project, previously unheard music by Kenny Wheeler, arrangements of music by our contemporary singer songwriter friends, as well as lots of our classic groove repertoire, and our end of year festive show with our own unique takes on Christmas songs old and new. We also finished a rather special recording project, not officially announced just yet….
Showstopper: The Improvised Musical got back to its usual ways, including the returning to Edinburgh for the first Fringe Festival to take place since 2019. The show continued its West End residency at the Lyric Theatre, and I also had the pleasure of playing for the first time with the Showstopper Kids show – an absolute delight in which children from the audience come up with ideas for the whole show.
Other highlights of the year included Afrik Bawantu at Secret Garden Party, where after playing our own set we joined forces with the legendary Dele Sosimi and his band for an extended late night Afrobeat jam; lots of joyful rodas de choro at The Harrison; and gigs with the excellent band Sambossa, playing a great range of classic Brazilian samba and MPB.
I’ve been doing some playing recently with Sambossa (covering for their regular horn player Marcelo Andrade), playing a great selection of Brazilian classics, featuring the excellent singer Carolina Lelis. Last Friday we played a really fun gig in Nottingham at Peggy’s Skylight – one of my favourite venues in the country.
Luckily I get to return there in just a couple of weeks with Alvorada, on Friday 29th April. Our previous gigs there have always been a pleasure, so I’m really looking forward to this next one.
Our residency at Pizza Express Jazz Club continues next with a lunchtime show next Sunday 24th April. We’ll be presenting a selection of groove classics alongside arrangements of our favourite singer-songwriters, old and new.
We’re also just off the back of a very special recording session which we did at the start of the month. This project hasn’t been officially announced yet, but we’re confident that it’s going to be very special indeed. We can’t say what it is yet – but we might throw in one number from it on this Sunday’s gig as a teaser….
ANDREW WOOLF 