Premiere: Romero Lubambo, Helio Alves, Reuben Rogers, Edu Ribeiro Team For ‘AT PLAY’

News, First Listen, Romero Lubambo, Helio Alves, Reuben Rogers, Edu Ribeiro

By DownBeat I Sep. 8, 2020

Edu Ribeiro (left), Reuben Rogers, Helio Alves and Romero Lubambo collaborate for *AT PLAY*.
(Photo: Courtesy of Artists)

The legacy of recorded music in Brazil—jazz and otherwise—is such a monumental contribution to the world that attempting to encompass all the ideas it’s expressed on a single disc is just about impossible.

That didn’t stop guitarist Romero Lubambo, pianist Helio Alves, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Edu Ribeiro from giving it a shot on AT PLAY, the ensemble’s nine-song collaboration that mixes originals and covers by folks like Caetano Veloso and Dori Caymmi.

“Pro Romero”—the tune below, which is part of the disc, which was released Aug. 14 on the Broken Symmetries imprint—comes from pianist Debora Gurgel’s book.

“Debora is a fantastic piano player and composer from São Paulo. I’ve known her music for a long time, but was very pleasantly surprised when she told me that she wrote a song for me,” Lubambo said in an email to DownBeat. “We had an opportunity to get together in São Paulo, and she showed me the song and we played it together. ... She perfectly combined Brazilian music, jazz and classical music in one song.”

That combination has poured out of the country for decades and given the world everything from Bossa Nova explorations to the more recent Brazil-related releases on the Jazz Is Dead label. DB