Along with the interviews and features I used to write for our local arts weekly, the Boston Phoenix, I filed a number of live music reviews. This one is my favorite. It was also one of the best concerts I have ever witnessed.
Originally published by the Boston Phoenix (July 25, 2003)
João Gilberto is renowned for his subtle sense of rhythm. But when the legendary singer and guitarist, now in his early 70s, shuffled onto the stage at the Wang Theatre Sunday, one day and 90 minutes late, it was a different feeling for time — or lack thereof — that had created the atmosphere in the house. A missed airplane flight had led to the postponement of the event for a day, changing a Saturday-night date into an early-Sunday-evening concert; and then an unexplained hour-and-a-half delay to the start of the show had begun to turn this eagerly awaited Boston debut of a master musician into a disastrous night at the theater. Gilberto hadn’t played a note and already there were babysitters to pay, dinner reservations to lose, hungry dates to feed.
Nevertheless, Gilberto took his time, which is what had brought so many people there in the first place. For more than two hours, he demonstrated the profound swing that has made him, and the bossa nova tunes he popularized, so famous. Song after song, his voice and hands locked in a bizarre race to be last — each a bit more behind the beat than the other, they threatened to lag into oblivion before yet another surprising harmonic turnaround would bring them back to the top of the song and falling toward the chorus again.
For all this rhythmic drama, Gilberto looked like nothing so much as a professor during office hours: rumpled, weary, bored or maybe bemused, but above all distracted — not from the subject at hand, but by it. Staring at the neck of his guitar, he studied the chord changes he was playing — changes he has been playing for more than 40 years — and seemed lost in thought over them. It was as if each chord were suddenly suggesting a new idea for how to proceed to the next. And if he played two choruses the same way during the entire evening, I missed it.
I also doubt that he ever so much as raised his eyes toward the audience. Never has a solo act been more alone on stage. Lost in thought, his famously whispered vocals sinking at times into a mere mumble, Gilberto appeared unaware of the several thousand other souls in the room. The songs occupied him utterly. Reharmonizing the familiar tunes, rearranging the rhythm of their melodies, he also seemed unwilling to let any of them go, repeating choruses four, five times, stretching these two-minute hits into dissertations on chord inversion and substitution. Without dynamics — his voice never rising above that whisper — and without interrupting the flood of plucked chords by even one sequence of single notes, he found infinite variety within the strict formula of his music.
Those who made for the exit before the evening was finished had to be forgiven; this was a demanding night on the audience. But those who missed the encore missed the highlight of the performance. Dogged by out-of-tune strings throughout the evening, Gilberto’s guitar finally eased its way into pitch — did someone tune it for him off stage? And was that a hint of a smile that flashed across his face? Among a series of more lightly playful takes on his signature songs — "Chega de saudade," "Desafinado," and, yes, "Garota do Ipanema" — he included a memorable version of the Gershwins’ "’S Wonderful" that his Brazilian accent altered so that it seemingly (and fittingly) included the lyric "you can’t blame me for feeling morose."
Then he shuffled off, to miss his next flight.
Listening to: Cancionera by Natalia Lafourcade
Cooking: ojo de cabra beans
I am from Brazil and João Gilberto has always cast a huge shadow over Brazilian music. He wasn't on media, didn't do interviews and his albums were few and far between, but he was highly influential, Godlike proportions. Maybe even more than the Christ with stretched arms atop Corcovado in Rio. I think most people don't realize João authored a total of SEVEN songs in his entire career - but all of them are absolute classics. Also, he made songs by other authors sound like they were written for him or, alternatively, he remade them completely that looked like they were his from the start. I saw him for the first time in 2000 in São Paulo, the first concert by him in a long time and sure there was a delay: he took to the stage two hours late and people started to whisper worriedly he would be in a bad mood. In Brazil, he was mistakenly known as a pain in the ass on stage because in the Seventies he got into some argument in a live TV show at Brazil's leading network, TV Globo, and ever since people started thinking he was a prima donna with no respect whatsoever for the public. Couldn't be further from the truth: he demanded excellence in sound quality and Globo couldn't (or didn't want to) provide it for him. At a later show, he was booed by an audience of filthy rich people when he was again disappointed with the acoustics of the theatre (and he was right: it was a huge architecture aberration with the worst acoustics I've ever experienced). At the 2000 concert I attended in a smaller venue, despite João being late, he played for almost three hours and was absolutely charming with the audience. Everybody cheered as he laughed and joked with some audience members, totally relaxed and smiling all the way through. After that I saw him again in 2003 and it was as good as the first one, the same good vibrations all the time. I don't think he ever played Brazil again after that. It was a mind-blowing experience - I went to concerts by almost all of the greatest Brazilian musicians and can tell those two concerts are at least in my top 5 ever.
As I recall, Fred Taylor booked that Wang show. I think it was a real nail-biter for him. I have to look it up in his memoir..... So, "inversions" or "out of tune guitar" or "wrong notes"?