Premiere: Hear Camila Meza Cover Milton Nascimento on a Tune from the Guitarist’s Upcoming ‘Ámbar’

  I  
Image

Guitarist, bandleader and composer Camila Meza is set to issue her fifth leader album, Ámbar, on May 31.

(Photo: Rachel Thalia Fisher)

The premise for Ámbar, guitarist Camila Meza’s fifth leader date (due out May 31 on Sony Music Masterworks), has something to do with time, distance, and the excavation and understanding of truth.

A member of Ryan Keberle’s Catharsis and Fabian Almazan’s Rhizome, Meza still found time to sculpt a program of originals and covers by folks like Elliot Smith, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Pat Metheny and David Bowie.

Debuting here is the bandleader’s take on Milton Nascimento’s “Milagre Dos Peixes,” a tune that maintains some of the original’s folk feel through the inclusion of the Nectar Orchestra’s pair of violins, even as some dark electricity creates tension during the song’s middle portion.

“It felt very intuitive to bring ‘Milagre Dos Peixes’ to this setting,” Meza said in a press release. “One of the messages I get from this song is that Nascimento is also singing about the imminent loss of the human connection to nature, and how a new generation is lured into worshipping the ‘new saints’ that come in the form of TV, isolating them and diminishing their reverence for nature. The lyrics say, ‘They no longer talk about the fishes and the sea, they don’t see the flower blooming, the sun rising, and I’m just one more who talks about this pain, our pain.’”

For more information about the guitarist’s new album, as well as summer tour dates, visit Meza’s homepage. DB



  • Coltrane_John_008_copy_2.jpg

    “This is one of the great gifts that Coltrane gave us — he gave us a key to the cosmos in this recording,” says John McLaughlin.

  • 2tx3p_BNJF2025LineupApr11080x1350--1_copy.jpg

    The Blue Note Jazz Festival New York kicks off May 27 with a James Moody 100th Birthday Celebration at Sony Hall.

  • Ethan_Iverson_by_David_Moressi_2024_copy.jpg

    “I’m certainly influenced by Geri Allen,” said Iverson, during a live Blindfold Test at the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival.

  • Isaiah_Collier_by_Michael_Jackson_2025.jpg

    “At the end of the day, once you’ve run out of differences, we’re left with similarities,” Collier says. “Cultural differences are mitigated through 12 notes.”

  • Andy_Bey_NYC_2014_by_Steven_Sussman_copy.jpg

    “It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”

    Vocalist Andy Bey Dies at 85

    Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…


On Sale Now
May 2025
Branford Marsalis
Look Inside
Subscribe
Print | Digital | iPad