Beijo Partido (EP)
by MARIA PUGA LAREO & QUIQUE SINESI
on My Keter Records
12/02/2008
Jazz/ Bossa Nova / World
1) Beijo Partido (Broken Kiss) (Toninho Horta) (4:40)
2) Atras da Porta (Behind The Door) (Chico Buarque/Francis Hime) (4:17)
Maria Puga Lareo, vocals
Quique Sinesi, guitars
Produced by Maria Puga Lareo
Co-Producer: Fernando Gelbard
Vocal arrangements on "Beijo Partido": Fernando Gelbard
Recorded at Estudios ION, Buenos Aires, December 2007 by Jorge "El Portuges" Da Silva and Javier Mazzarol
Post Production: Multi Media Recording Studios, Hollwood, by Mark Vincent
Mixed by Maria Puga Lareo and Jorge "El Portugues" Da Silva at Estudios ION, Buenos Aires
Mastering: Kurt Lundvall at Lundvall Masters, Jersey City, New Jersey
Art Direction and Cover Design: Maria Puga Lareo
Liner Notes: Norberto Gimelfarb (Ballaigues, Switzerland)
www.myketerrecords.com
My Keter Records®: Album X055152
©2008 My Keter Records®
A BROKEN KISS BEHIND THE DOOR: A MAGIC-SCAPE OF VOICE AND GUITAR.
Soft raindrops caressingly falling all over a dreamy landscape. Tinkling toy raindrops in love. In love with two human beings wandering in that landscape: Lady Singer and Lord Guitarist. These two, unable to forget their sweet walk under the so movingly loving raindrops, feel the need to recreate that mood. Their being musicians helps: she sings, he plays the guitar. She, Maria Puga Lareo, is a superb classy singer and producer, blessed with a pristine voice and a range of three octaves that seems to encompass the whole range of emotions. He, Quique Sinesi, a Grammy® award winner, was born with the blessings of the most powerful guitar fairies. To round up things and make a record of it, in came the Magician co-producer, Fernando Gelbard, to round up things.
That makes three artists looking for a music able to bring about the magic of a dreamy landscape. The raindrops are to be partaken between the Voice and the Guitar, says the Magician, but the Guitar argues that raindrops and harp-like sounds being his domain, the Voice should take up the vocal poetry, the binding legato of the human voice. As for the actual music and poetry, Brazilian music and the language spoken in Brazil would do. And thus they chose two lovely and haunting songs: Francis Hime's “Atras da Porta” (Behind the Door) and Toninho Horta's “Beijo Partido” (Broken Kiss), seemed the ideal means of rendering an unforgettable dream, its intimacy, its unique flavour.
Though the lyrics of the two songs deal with lost love, they are a labour of love, the eternal subject of more than many a song. And a labour of love is, too, the work of the two involved in the actual recording. Hush: Lord Guitar Sinesi is playing his intro to "Beijo Partido". Playing, did we say playing? No, he's actually creating a lovable web of sounds, the soil on which a flow of flowers is to bloom: María Puga Lareo's voice can rest, move, soar, caress the lyrics, sing them, sob them, cry them. Then—out of the web of sound Sinesi has been weaving—come two guitars played by him: a solo guitar and a comping one. The listener though does not realize immediately there has been a change in the musical flow—voice and guitar are so tightly interwoven that, when the voice is back, one takes it naturally. The single voice has been briefly back when it turns into a choir: Lady Singer multiplied—the vocal choir by multitracking is an arrangement of the Magician co-producer, Fernando Gelbard, who is a musician too. Then we are brought back to the single voice behind which Lord Guitar is now playing an obligato till the broken kiss of the song title is reflected in the multiple broken voices of the Lady Singer… when a fade out robs us out of our listening fascination and ends the blooming broken kiss.
In "Atras da Porta" we find another facet of the exquisite pain that pervades the first song. Hear how the introducing arpeggios by Sinesi flow straight into the accompaniment of María's rendering of the lyrics. Somehow the door of the song's title are the guitars of Sinesi, the world of hope and despair on both sides of the door is María's voice.
María Puga Lareo, Quique Sinesi and Fernando Gelbard are Argentineans and therefore open to the music and poetry of the wide world, that's why they are attracted as much by Brazilian musical and poetic languages as by jazz. María is a singer and a songwriter, but she is also the founder of her own record label “My Keter Records” and producer of this album. She started singing in 1997 and has performed mostly in Buenos Aires, where she was born, and in New York. Wherever she has sung, live, on TV or on records, she has always chosen to do so in the company of the best musicians available, so that her performances would constitute a privileged musical moment. For her debut album Body and Soul she surrounded herself with a Who's Who of three generations of Argentinean jazz musicians—Ricardo Cavalli and Hugo Pierre, reeds; Manuel Fraga, piano; Ricardo Lew, guitar, Juan Antonio Rodríguez, bass; and Pablo González, drums—led and arranged by one of the best tenor players in Argentina: Enrique Varela, a living legend, who was 84 at the time of the recording! The album’s first pressing sold out and its second pressing is now distributed by the major chains of CD stores. An EP with four tunes from that album has been released in 2007 by My Keter Records and is being sold worldwide by Amazon ®, Itunes ®, Napster® and other major digital distributors. Coming next, is an album she recorded in the summer of 2007 with a quartet of masters in their craft: Carlos Franzetti on piano —Franzetti did also the arrangements—, Fernando Gelbard on flute, Eddie Gomez on bass and Ed Uribe on drums. María's repertoire includes jazz standards, Brazilian songs and some of her own inspired compositions. She was commissioned by Fox Sports to compose the signature tune and incidental music for the show "Limite 4x4", broadcast to all the Americas. She's a member of BMI and IWJ (International Women in Jazz).
Quique Sinesi, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1960 is considered one of the most important guitarists in his country and plays the 7 strings acoustic Spanish guitar, but also the regular 6 strings guitar, charango and piccolo guitar. His musical palette includes elements of tango and folk music from Argentina, candombe —a lively Afro-Uruguayan-Argentinean rhythm—, Latin-American music, jazz, improvisation, world music, classical music. As wide in scope as his music is the following list of musicians from many different countries with whom he has played or recorded: Enrico Rava, Pedro Aznar, Rubén Rada, Paquito D'Rivera, Joe Lovano, Markus Stockhausen, Erling Kroner, Wolfgang Haffner, Marcelo Moguilevsky, Mitchel Forman, Carlos Aguirre, Juan Falú, Karnataka College of Percussion, Dieter Ilg, Jasper Van t'Hof, Nazim, Daniel Messina, Pablo Ziegler. He played for many years with bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi and founded the group Alfombra Mágica with Matías Gonzalez and Horacio López. Since 1999 he has a regular duet with the legendary saxophonist Charlie Mariano, with whom he recorded two CD's: the duet record of 2001 "Tango para Charlie" (Enja Records) and the preceding year, "Color cielo" (Genuit Music) with Mariano and an international group of musicians. In the year 2000 he started the "New Tango Duo" with Pablo Ziegler, the pianist of Astor Piazolla's quintet from 1978 to 1988, and both invited bandoneonist Walter Castro as special permanent guest. Since 1980 Sinesi has an impressive number of albums to his credit and has played in many important international guitar festivals. On the symphonic side, in 2003 he recorded Astor Piazzolla's Double Concerto for Guitar and Bandoneon with Lothar Henzel, bandoneon, and the Deutschland Radio Berlin's Symphony Orchestra. He has performed in a number of Latin American countries, North America as well as in Europe and Turkey.
In the making of an album, the creativity of musicians reaches the audience through a complex procedure: the actual recording, the ulterior mixing and mastering of the results. This is a highly technical process, but it is nevertheless also a labor of love, experience and knowledge: under Maria’s direction and guidance as producer and Fernando Gelbard’s supervision as co-producer, the sound captured by Engineer Jorge Da Silva at Ion Studios Buenos Aires, Mark Vincent at Multi Media Studios in Hollywood and Kurt Lundvall's mastering in New Jersey, delivered these two phenomenal songs. In "Beijo Partido", the vocal choir arrangement by Fernando Gelbard, sung by Maria in multiple tracks, put an extra touch of harmony to the already rich background created by Quique Sinesi... Now, dear listener, it's your turn to enliven all those endeavours.
Norberto Gimelfarb, Ballaigues, Switzerland.
