BRAZILIAN SINGER IVAN LINS JOINS WINTER SOLSTICE
 The warm and rhythmic music of Brazil will help us “bring home the sun” in our upcoming 34th annual Winter SolsticeSeries, December 19, 20 and 21, at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Renowned singer/composer Ivan Lins will be joining us, for the first time, along with singer and guitarist Renato Braz, and a Brazilian chorus.
The 25 dancers and drummers of the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre will premiere a new work based on an Ivan Lins composition, and our favorite gospel singer, Theresa Thomason, will perform with both Ivan and Renato, as well as the Consort. We will dedicate the entire Winter Solstice event to our long-time Brazilian brother, guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves, who passed away in late September (see below).
Guest artist Lins is one of Brazil’s most beloved musical superstars, and its best-known living songwriter. He has recorded more than 35 albums and won multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. His songs have been recorded by many notable international artists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan, Michael Bublé, George Benson, Take 6, and Dave Grusin.
SOLSTICE COLLECTION DOWNLOAD
 Once again, we are pleased to offer you our free Winter Solstice Collection album. It’s become a tradition for us, that each year just before our Winter Solstice Celebration, we put together the collection, and invite you to download it for free. Our intent is both to give a sampling of our musical lineup for this year’s show, and also simply to share the music.
This year’s collection is 10 tracks, more than 40 minutes, with an emphasis on Brazilian songs by Ivan Lins and Renato Braz, as well as pieces by the Paul Winter Consort and Theresa Thomason. All these performers, along with the dancers and drummers of the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre will join us at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Dec. 19-21.
We hope you’ll enjoy the collection, and please share it with others: listen & download.
Included Tracks
1. Velho Sermão – Ivan Lins
2. Peasant Revels – Paul Winter Consort
3. Last Train – Renato Braz
4. Icarus – Paul Winter Consort
5. Bandeira do Divino – Ivan Lins
6. The Rain is Over and Gone – Theresa Thomason
7. Lua Soberama – Renato Braz
8. Fantasia – Paul Winter Consort
9. Silent Night – Renato Braz & the Paul Winter Consort
10. Common Ground – Paul Winter Consort
SALUTE TO OSCAR
 Oscar Castro-Neves and I met in June of 1962, when my Sextet played in Rio de Janeiro during our six-month State Department tour of Latin America. We crossed paths again that October when Oscar came to New York to be musical director for the first-ever Bossa Nova concert in the US, at Carnegie Hall. After Oscar came to live in Los Angeles in the late ’60s, as musical director for Sergio Mendes’ band, Brazil 66, we reconnected and he helped me produce the Consort’s second album, Something in the Wind, in 1969, and then came on tour with us.
In the spring of 1977, I went to LA to spend some days with Oscar at his home, exploring ideas for a new album. I had a new vision for the Consort’s music, embracing vocals for the first time, as well as the voices of wolf, whale and eagle, as a symbolic trilogy of the greater life family, representing the land, the sea and the air.
I had invited an array of musicians from diverse genres to come to my farm during the summer months to collaborate in creating this new album. I wanted to feature Oscar’s rhythmic realm in the new music, and Oscar played me many recordings from a broad spectrum of traditional and contemporary Brazilian music. One song ignited my soul: “Velho Sermão,” by Ivan Lins, based on a rhythm from the Northeast of Brazil, where the African influence was most prominent. This song had exactly the bright energy and spirit I wanted for the album, and I began wondering if we might create English lyrics for it. That summer, with new musicians gathered at the farm, we began playing “Velho Sermão” instrumentally, to get it into our bodies, and see what lyrics might emerge, that might put forth the message of our music-making summer “village.” By the end of the summer we had the words, and the title: “Common Ground.” This became the title song for the album, and has been part of the Consort’s repertoire since. So Ivan Lins has been a spiritual member of our community for these many years, but in all my trips to Brazil, and all his to the US, we’ve never crossed paths.
Over the decades since then, Oscar was my co-dreamer, and co-producer on many albums, including Missa Gaia/Earth Mass, Concert for the Earth, Canyon, Earthbeat, and Brazilian Days. He was part of the Consort in our performances at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1991; with the Boston Pops in 2000; and at the Cathedral for our “Carnival for the Rainforest” and numerous Solstice celebrations. We shared the dream of weaving the world together through music.
In early September this year I got word that Oscar was seriously ill, and I flew to Los Angeles to see him. He was bedridden, and had great difficulty talking, but I got to play for him a recording of my reunited Sextet with African singer Abdoulaye Diabate, from last year’s Winter Solstice Celebration, and he smiled broadly and punched both thumbs up in the air, and then whispered to me: “It is a revisit to that sacred ground we cherish.” Six days later, Oscar passed away.
He was, and is, a true treasure of the world, and beloved by all who knew him.
Oscar had also brought Renato Braz into the Consort’s life in 2005. I had heard one track on a “Rough Guide to Brazilian Music” compilation, that had a beautiful clear high beguiling voice, by a singer whose name I didn’t know. I wanted to learn more about him, and asked various friends if they’d ever heard of Renato Braz, and no-one had. In Rio that spring I asked my long-time friend Carlos Lyra, and he also didn’t know of Renato. When I came home I decided I would ask Oscar, Brazil’s greatest ambassador to the world, and he began calling around for me. Two days later Oscar called me and said: “I found him. He’s from Sao Paulo, which is why our Rio community didn’t know him. I had a wonderful talk with him, and I think he’s going to be one of our dearest friends.” And his prediction absolutely came true.
So once again, Oscar is bringing us all together, as we salute him in this year’s Solstice Celebration. |
