Featuring
Edison Machado
Dom Um Romão
Edmundo Maciel
João Luiz Maciel
Macacheira
Norato
Novelli
Marcia Maria
Claudio Guimarães
Ricardo Costa
Paulo Guimarães
Ricardo do Canto
Célio de Carvalho
Jorjão Carvalho
Paulinho Trompete
A composer's composer, a musician's musician, Nelson Angelo is a uniquely creative and revered artist on Brazil's contemporary music scene. Born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais in 1949, Nelson Angelo is acclaimed as one of Brazil's greatest sidemen, having played for over thirty-five years with superstars such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chico Buarque, Edu Lobo, Elis Regina, Nana Caymmi, Luis Bonfa, Sergio Mendes, Egiberto Gismonti, and many others. He is one of the founding members of Milton Nascimento's "Clube da Esquina", a seminal Brazilian musical movement of late twentieth century, comparable to Tropicalia and Bossa Nova in its importance. He has recorded eleven of his own projects, performed on countless recordings by other artists, and written dozens of well-known tunes.
From the age of 10, Angelo studied classical guitar. Self-taught as a composer and arranger, he left the interior of Brazil in the mid-sixties for Rio to become an integral figure in one of the most fertile periods of Brazilian popular music. As part of Milton Nascimento's inner circle, the guitarist played on Milton's first seven releases, records that dramatically shaped the direction of Brazilian popular music in their day. Angelo's 1970 "Nelson Angelo & Joyce" was a special collaboration between the composer and his then-wife, the legendary Joyce. He describes the album as, "...a very delicate, very interesting work by two people in love and full of hope." In the late nineteen-seventies, Angelo recorded with jazz vocal diva Sarah Vaughan on her internationally successful "I Love Brazil" album. He also found time to record in the States with Sergio Mendes and Brazil 88 on their 1978 Elektra recording "Sergio Mendes". During the 1980's, he lived in Paris part-time and recorded two masterpieces of modern Brazilian acoustic music, "Nana Vasconcelos & Nelson Angelo & Novelli" and "Mireiro Pau". When the sounds of Brazil became an integral part of London's acid jazz scene, the Angelo track "Tiro Cruzado", recorded in earlier eras by Sergio Mendes and Antonio Carlos Jobim, was re-mixed and became a cult club favorite.
A musician who claims to have tape recordings of countless works in progress overflowing from dresser drawers and stacked up under his bed, Angelo is still composing a mile a minute. His current projects include an original musical, a documentary musical about his hometown, and an experimental ballet. In April, Angelo plans a Brazilian release for "Mar de mineiro", an album of new songs with lyrics penned by the Brazilian poet Cacaso. Among the stellar guest performances on the album, Angelo's daughters vocalists Clara Moreno and Ana Martins join their father on his 12th recording. At 53 "years young", Nelson Angelo shows no signs of slowing down.
