Description
Rare classic 60s album by Azymuth legend Jose Roberto Bertrami reissued on CD and LP.
Best known as the keyboardist and bandleader of legendary trio Azymuth, the late José Roberto Bertrami also wrote for, arranged for and performed with Elis Regina, George Duke, Sarah Vaughn, Jorge Ben, Eddie Palmieri, Milton Nascimento, Flora Purim and Erasmo Carlos, among countless others - But before all of that, in 1965, at the age of just nineteen, Zé Roberto recorded his first studio album with his group Os Tatuís, and the José Roberto Trio in the following year.
These largely slept-on albums of beautiful, expressive samba jazz and bossa nova stand as a testament to the prodigious genius of one of the most important musicians in Brazil's history.
Born in 1946 in Tatuí - a small city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, José Roberto was the eldest of seven children, four of whom became musicians. His father Lázaro was a classical violinist and a professor at Tatuí's public conservatory, the largest music school in Latin America - for which the city is nicknamed "Music City". After two years of piano lessons from the age of seven, Bertrami began losing interest, spending more time playing football and what he himself referred to as "professional vagabondage". At thirteen, as his mother was despairing that her son was going off the rails, Zé Roberto enrolled at the conservatory. "In my two years there, I did seven years' work and then I was expelled. The conservatory was almost entirely a classical music situation, and I'd begun to break some rules—like holding a jam session at school."
A year later, in 1966, Bertrami went back into the studio, but this time stripping the format back to a trio set up. Again featuring Claudio Henrique Betrami on double bass, and with Jovito Coluna on drums, the José Roberto Trio recorded their one and only album, featuring compositions by Baden Powell, Manfredo Fest, and Marcos Valle. The album also featured three of Betrami's own compositions: the wistful "Lilos Watts", the groovy "Kebar" and the dazzling "Talhuama". In the vein of the pioneering Tamba Trio who had so inspired Bertrami in the few years prior, the José Roberto Trio typified an emerging movement within bossa nova in the mid-sixties, with a distinctively Brazilian reimagining of the piano jazz trio sound conceived by the likes of Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal, and further developed by Bill Evans. Following on from Tamba Trio, in Brazil, the mid-sixties saw a number of great Brazilian bossa jazz trios recording around this time, such as Bossa Três, Milton Banana Trio, Tenório Jr, and Bossa Jazz Trio, the latter another group helmed by Betrami.
Both Os Tatuís and José Roberto Trio will be reissued on vinyl, CD and digitally via Far Out Recordings. Across both of these historic albums, Bertrami's stunningly performed compositions are rich with harmonic complexity and rhythmic ingenuity, providing a precursor to some of Bertrami's futuristic fusion with Azymuth later in his career.
