We are consumers just like you and not professional critics — even though you might have seen our names in other publications. That is why most of the reviews you will read here are positive. We tend to buy the music we review and only write about the good ones. Yes, of course we have made bad purchases, but we will keep those on our shelves. If you want to reach any of us, please use the contact form at the bottom of this page.
Egídio Leitão – Born and raised in the northeast of Brazil, in Fortaleza, Ceará, Egídio moved to Texas in 1981. Always connected to music, he did graduate work at The University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in the songs of protest of Gonzaguinha. A hobby became a passion. Today, more than ever, he continues to promote Brazilian music in any way he can.
Kees Schoof – Born and raised in Amsterdam, Holland, Kees grew up listening to jazz, where Airto and Flora Purim awakened an interest in Brazilian music. Through their music, other Brazilian musicians “showed up.” His first visit to Rio (1983) started a never-ending love affair with the music and the country. His preferences cover a wide range of musical styles.
CONTRIBUTORS
Maria do Carmo Mendonça Nogueira da Gama
Jeff Kunkel
Randy Leago
Regina Makarem
Tom Moore
Maria Helena de Campos Paiva
Adalberto Carvalho Pinto
Maria do Carmo Mendonça Nogueira da Gama – Born in Minas Gerais, today she lives in Brasília, DF. She started piano lessons at the age of six, stopped at 20 years old and restarted some time after that. She likes all Brazilian music genres as well as classical music. Today, her hobby is playing classical and Brazilian music, including Choro, Samba, Bossa Nova, waltzes and others, especially old songs. She enjoys studying the lives of singers and songwriters. An attorney by profession, she worked with the Bank of Brazil, from where she has retired. Today, besides music, she dedicates some of her time to copyright laws, and she is actively involved in several internet groups about music and other topics. (She passed away on October 30, 2003.)
Jeff Kunkel – Composer, pianist and educator Jeff Kunkel is the Coordinator of Jazz Studies for the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Jeff teaches course in jazz and music education, and directs the school’s top jazz group, the MSU Jazz Ensemble, that has played with many great jazz artists including Brazilian composer/arranger Mario Adnet, the Grammy-winning New York Voices, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, and trombonist/arranger Alan Ferber. Enamored of “música Brasileira” much of his life, Jeff began a deeper association with Brasil during an academic sabbatical in 2007, that eventually resulted in the release of his first solo recording as a leader, “Meu Coração Brasileiro” (Delira, 2013). Jeff’s second release, entitled “Many Happy Returns”, and featuring the same fantastic group of Rio based musicians including Vika Barcellos (voice), Mauro Senise (woodwinds), Alex Rocha (bass), and co-producer Haroldo Mauro (drums), is due to be released late in summer of 2015.
Randy Leago – Keyboardist and woodwind artist living in Nashville, TN, USA, Randy has recorded and performed with a great number of musical artists, including Janis Ian, Lucinda Williams, Dixie Chicks, Deana Carter, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings and Engelbert Humperdinck. His hobby and passion is the music and culture of Brasil, and he also plays uniquely Brazilian instruments such as cavaquinho, cuíca and surdo.
Regina Makarem – Public Federal employee, Regina lives in Bélem, Pará, north of Brazil by the Amazon. A die-hard music lover, she sometimes thinks that music and herself are one. Pure sentiment. She loves to promote new talents and dreams of working with music promotion some day.
Tom Moore – Tom Moore has been fascinated by the language and culture of Brazil since beginning to study Portuguese in 1994. He performs baroque and contemporary music for flute both in Brazil and the U.S., and has commissioned and premiered works by Sergio Roberto de Oliveira, João Guilherme Ripper, David Korenchendler, Antonio Guerreiro, Mark Hagerty and others. He is active as a translator from Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian, and has contributed to such magazines as Fanfare, Goldberg, 21st Century Music and Early Music America.
Maria Helena de Campos Paiva – Brazilian, born in São Paulo, journalist, she is active in the areas of music, theatre, arts, cinema and television. She is the director of Revista Arte Magazine, Jornal das Artes and No Seu Bairro, and she is also vice president of Feira de Antigüidades do Bixiga. As media advisor, she has worked with recording labels RGE, 3M and CBS (Sony Music) for press releases for various shows as well as many artists, such as Flora Purin & Airto Moreira, Billy Vaughan, Peppino de Capri, João Bosco, Carlos Lyra, Maria Alcina (also her manager), Lúcia Veríssimo, Lucinha Lins. Sérgio Reis, Zeca Pagodinho, Jesse, Lecy Brandão and others. As a Brazilian music researcher, her present work is targetting Simone’s career, who recently completed 33 of a successful career. The results of that research might become an exhibition in the near future.
Adalberto Carvalho Pinto – Brazilian, born in Ceará in 1969, he studied Civil Engineering at the Federal University of Ceará. Since 1994, he has lived in Brasília, DF. He is a federal employee for the Brazilian presidency in the area of government auditing. He enjoys doing musical research, particularly concentrating on singers, songwriters and instrumentalists. He writes reviews and, as often as possible, includes a basic discography of those artists he reviews. He also studies music at the Music School of Brasília, and he is a member of the popular music group of that institution.