Época de Ouro: The Golden Age of Brazilian Music

The Eliot Society is proud to present the first concert of the 2017 series: “Época de Ouro: The Golden Age of Brazilian Music”, featuring the Pablo Regis and Tom Rohde Brazilian Ensemble with special guest Cissa Paz.
This program takes the audience on a musical tour of the development and crystallization of traditional and popular Brazilian musical genres in the early twentieth century during Brazil’s golden age of music and demonstrates how these genres have influenced the shape of Brazilian music in the decades that followed.
The performance features some of Washington D.C.’s most prominent Brazilian musicians who will demonstrate the variety and richness of Brazilian vocal, instrumental, and dance music using traditional Brazilian string, wind, and percussion instruments.
A short pre-concert lecture, given by musicologist Tom Rohde, will trace the important social and cultural factors in Brazilian history that led to the formation of these rich Brazilian musical traditions.
Musicians
Pablo Regis – cavaco & vocals
Cissa Paz – vocals
Tom Rohde – guitar
Andy Connell – clarinet and sax
Babajan – percussion
Bruno Lucini – percussion
About Tom Rohde
Thomas Rohde, guitarist, has performed throughout the United States, Brazil and Taiwan as a soloist and chamber musician. Select performances include the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the Spoletto Festival in Charleston, SC, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Ryles Jazz Club and the Regattabar. He has performed with the New World Symphony, the New Bedford Symphony, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
Mr. Rohde’s performance and research interests cross the boundaries between classical, world music, and jazz. From 1997-2004 he was a member of the New World Guitar Trio with whom he recorded the CD, Exiled, released in 2000 (available on itunes). He has also played as a percussionist with the Cornell University Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, the Boston-based Brazilian drumming groups Samba Tremeterra and Butakaxé and as a tenor banjo player with the Happy Feet Dance Orchestra. Recently he has performed with Choro Democrático, an all-acoustic seven-piece ensemble that plays Choro, a popular Brazilian instrumental style , and the Caravan world music trio’
Rohde holds a Bachelor of Music in guitar performance from Ithaca College and a Master of Music degree, with honors, in guitar performance from the New England Conservatory. He has conducted extensive research on Brazilian music, by traveling and studying percussion, dance and guitar in Brazil and the U.S. and is a contributing author of the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music. Mr. Rohde has been on the music faculty of Middlesex Community College, Bridgewater State University, and Roger Williams University where he has taught classical guitar, chamber music, improvisation, music appreciation, and seminars on Brazilian music and culture. He is currently working on a Ph. D. in musicology with a minor in Latin American Music at Catholic University in Washington D.C.

About Pablo Regis
Pablo’s energetic playing stems from growing up in Brazilian music in and around his fathers’ Brazilian music bands and productions, including Los Angeles’ first samba school Embrasmba. Pablo was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Choro Ensemble and performs with various artists in the DC area. He brings to his instrument a deep rhythmic affinity that ramps up the crowd’s excitement to get them moving.
 
 
 
 
About Cissa Paz
Cissa Paz is a Brazilian singer-song writer. The diversity of her cultural experience merges with her fearless taste for new combinations, as she creates and rearranges songs that are melded with the rich traditions of Afro-Brazilian and Luso-African concepts. Cissa’s captivating stage presence and soulful voice bring music that is fresh, fun and rhythmic.
Cissa’s self-titled album released in September, 2015 “is unexpectedly playful and whimsical in the nicest sense of the word, and we almost always end up falling in love with her on this…The bounding momentum of some of her sambas is uncompromising and she evokes the joie de vivre of much that is beautiful about being Brasilian.” (World Music Report).
Born in Belgium by chance, Cissa was raised mostly in Rio de Janeiro. She began her musical love affair by spending afternoons with the sounds of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Elis Regina and other Brazilian greats coming from her parents’ record player. She would get home after school and rush to the vinyls, memorizing all her favorite lyrics. She absorbed every note, riff, and samba beat. Her musical tastes matured as she kept sampling the musical diversity of the world. Cissa’s passion for music started with dance, she studied ballet, jazz, modern dance and the urban styles of samba and salsa, leading her to perform and teach later on. Her dance background is reflected on her music and is why most of her songs have a rhythmic sound that gets people on their feet.
Cissa’s sound was initially influenced by samba, afoxé, forro, maracatu and the popular music of Brazil. After moving to the U.S., she fell in love with RnB, Soul and Hip Hop and over the years her travels exposed her to more of the world’s music landscape. Upon learning about Cape Verdean and the music coming from the Lusophone diaspora in general, she felt an inherent familiarity with the sound.  The parallels between her background and theirs were unavoidable.  So she has devoted the last few years to studying those styles and finding even more ways of blending them with what was familiar to her, the music of Brazil.
Cissa performs songs in Portuguese, Portuguese Creole, Spanish, French and English. With a voice that is soft and soulful and a vibrant stage presence, Cissa is fun to watch and enjoys talking about the lyrics and teaching audiences about the styles of music she performs.