From: martins@hpl.hp.com (Henrique Martins)
Subject: Jazz/Lisbon
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 05:54:07 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA


  Descobri isto aqui no meu jornal diario, com uma certa surpresa.

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  In "San Jose Mercury News",
     Monday, January 4, 1993
     Entertainment Section
  Transcribed without permission

  Lisbon likes its jazz hot at the Hot Clube
  by Susan Linnee, Associated Press Writer

  Lisbon, Portugal

  In the early 1950s when transatlantic flights from new York to Paris
still had to stop over in Lisbon, Bernardo Moreira and his friend, Luis
Villas Boas, got an idea.

  They were crazy about bebop, the new jazz music broadcast over the U.S.
Armed Forces radio network in post World War II Europe. But bebop was
unknown in Portugal, where there were no records to practice to and no one
to teach them how to play it.

  So, Moreira and Villas Boas formed the Hot Clube de Portugal and brought
the music - and the musicians - home.

  "Luis worked at the airport and had access to the passenger lists, which
he checked religiously for names of any jazz musicians who might be on
their way to Paris," Moreira said. :When he found one, we would go out and
meet the flight. The musicians were usually delighted to have some place to
go during the stopover."

  When they missed the name of Dexter Gordon, another jazz fan at the
airport steered the legendary tenor saxophonist in the right direction.

  Forty years later, the Hot Clube still swings at 38 Praca da Alegria
(Happiness Square), down a rickety flight of stairs to a low-ceilinged
room that would make fire marshals wince.


Portugals' first family of jazz

  It has some 400 dues-paying members and is home to Portugal's first and
only jazz school.

  Moreira, an amateur bass player turned successful architectural engineer,
is the father of four sons, all of them jazz musicians, although 26-year
old Miguel has put aside the piano for a career in astrophysics.

  Jazz critic Raul Vaz Bernardo says the Moreiras are sort of Portugal's
answer to the Marsalis jazz family of New Orleans.

  Guided by their pianist father, Ellis, the Marsalis sons have been
instrumental in imbuing the jazz scene with both chic and seriousness.

  "One of the most rewarding experiences in Portuguese jazz has been the
Moreira family," said Vaz Bernardo. "They've literally taken jazz through
the country."

  During a recent weekend festival in Lisbon that featured the three
Moreira brothers and pianist cousin Bernardo Sassetti, as well as the Hot
Clube's new big band, Bernardo Moreira and Villas Boas, both in their 60s,
were in the front row of the tiny, packed club until dawn.

  Although at first glance Lisbon and New Orleans don't appear to have much
in common, both are ports, both are funky and both are steeped in their own
musical culture.

Jazz and fado

  "Jazz in the beginning was like our fado music. It was quite simple, but
it has grown very complex," said Pedro Moreira, 23, tenor saxophone and
leader of the Moreiras Quartet or Quintet, depending on who's playing. He
is also finishing a university degree in mathematics.

  Fado is the haunting, lyrical music brought to Lisbon from North Africa
by Arab invaders in the ninth century. The city now also swings to music
from Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique, former Portuguese colonies in
Africa.

  Like his brothers, 27-year-old bass player Bernardo Moreira studied
classical music and was not allowed to listen to anything but jazz,
Beethoven and Brahms when his father was at home.

  "It wasn't as though he force it down our throats," he said. "We really
liked it, and we didn't really care that much for rock, except maybe the
Ramones."

  Although the younger Bernardo knows the odds are great, he has given up
his university studies in economics to try to make a living playing jazz.

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  -- Henrique (martins@hpl.hp.com)