MANFREDO FEST

One of the better-kept secrets among Brazil's bossa nova pioneers, Manfredo Fest's popularity and profile rose dramatically in the 1990s. Legally blind since birth, Fest's greatest early influence was George Shearing, but he developed his own approach apart from Shearing and other Brazilian jazz pianists, unleashing relentlessly flowing streams of bop-flavored notes against a Brazilian pulse, occasionally letting his classical roots show. Fest's father, an émigré from Germany, was a concert pianist who chaired the University of Porto Alegre's music department. Accordingly, Fest studied classical piano as a youth, learning to read music in Braille, but after graduating from the University of Rio Grande do Sul, his tastes had turned toward jazz and samba. Fest was part of the gathering of Brazilian musicians of the late-'50s who were developing the bossa nova movement, and he made a number of trio recordings in that vein from 1961 to 1966. After emigrating to read more...