Ze Bertrami & Projecto III Encontro CD

Vinyl LP version also available directly from the label at www.whatmusic.comThere can be few instrumental groups anywhere who have lasted as long as a unit, or recorded as many albums, as the brazilian trio Azymuth. Known the world over for their late 70s cross over albums (on the US indie Milestone and which included the jazz funk smash hit 'Jazz Carnival'), in recent years they have reached a wider and younger audience who have discovered the group either through the brazilian vinyl collector's scene or through their new recordings.Few people, however, are aware of just how many albums the group that came to be called Azimuth have recorded. Also known as Azymuth, (to avoid conflict with the european group on ECM) the band renamed themselves after a Marcos Valle composition on the soundtrack to 'Veu de Noiva' - the 1970 'telenovela' on Brazil's TV Globo. Even most collectors think that the group started life as the Apolo IV group on this soundtrack. The reality is that the group goes back much further - to the late 60s - and had a variety of names even before Apolo IV.This album on Equipe is one of the earliest incarnations of the group and features the members who still perform as Azymuth to this day - keyboard player José Roberto Bertrami, bassist Ivan (Mamão) Conti and drummer Alex Malheiros, joined here by a guitarist, Frederico. Although the sound on this record is more 'acoustic' - piano and electric organ feature heavily - the music is instantly identifiable as the Azymuth sound and the tones and textures created are as complex as any of the later synth-led albums.São Paulo-born Bertrami turned up in Rio in the late 60s with his musician brother Claudio and soon began to play with a wide variety of musicians. Ivan played alongside Edson Lobo in The Youngsters (who recorded on the soundtrack to Marcos Valle's 'Pigmaleão 70') and later at the legendary nightclub Drink, whilst Alex grew up around musicians like Sergio Mendes and once had a duo with Egberto Gismonti! Bertrami and the guys acted as a kind of house band for Equipe and recorded on a number of albums with other artists such as Candeia, Paulo Moura and others. Label head Oswaldo Cadaxo gave the band studio time which allowed them to develop as a group and from this 'woodshedding' emerged the two Equipe albums, 'Zé Roberto & Projecto III - Encontro', and 'O Trio - Projecto III' (to be reissued on whatmusic.com in 2003). Later Bertrami and his cohorts became the house band of another independent label: CiD.As a unit, Bertrami, Malheiros & Conti, have recorded on hundreds of projects and the group themselves have made albums under many names, mostly for the easy listening market or 'discotheque-sound' cash-in projects. But even these albums show off the consummate taste and subtle interplay that featured on the band's record releases under their new name, Azymuth, and many of these LPs are now rare collector's titles in their own right.Translation of the original liner notes:With this LP, Zé Roberto and his comrades put themselves at the service of brazilian popular music - definitively. And they even include a slice of Gershwin into the mix.The desire here is to make music, and even time itself demands it. Oh, if we could only show those who waste so much time fighting over the sanctification of what is and what isn't music! But what the hell, this is a great contribution.The recording of this album was done in the mornings over three or four days. During those days there was no sleep and very little in the way of sustenance. With the prospect of early morning recordings in mind, but without anything being pre-arranged, the guys would turn up at my house with their instruments and plug them in, in a kind of disinterested fashion, and proceed to make their sound happen. Dawn would arrive with the echo of their sound. And morning would take us by surprise with heavy bags under our eyes and our heads boiling over full of spontaneously combusting ideas - and wh