Like the tropicalistas of the 1960s, Amaro Freitas believes in the complexity of traditional Brazilian music. Hailing from the northeastern city of Recife – a regional neighbor of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso's Salvador – he combines the rural sounds of his region with the cosmopolitan glitz of Rio de Janeiro. Since debuting in 2016 with Blood NegroFreitas has incorporated rumba and baião rhythms with hard bop attitude and an elegant formalism closer to Bach than Bahia. Yes, his latest, was partly inspired by a trip to Manaus, a city of two million deep in the Amazon. The only real musical connection the album has to Freitas' previous work is his presence on keyboards. Gone is the urban small-ensemble jazz of 2018 Rashif and 2021 is more adventurous Sankofareplaced with liquid, spacious music that moves from calm to cacophony with remarkable ease.
Freitas' polyrhythmic playing – simultaneously unfolding different rhythms in each hand – is at once lacy and delicate, percussive and propulsive. “It's like my left hand is Africa and my right hand is Europe,” he said recently The New York Times. On Yes, finds new ways to apply this philosophy to his settings. On “Uira (Encantada da Água) – Vida e cura”, he plays a prepared piano whose muted strings transform the notes into percussion, more like a tabla than a conventional keyboard instrument, while the winged filigree of a second, raw piano seems to floats to the top. A bass line reminiscent of Mulatu Astatke's Ethio-jazz moves around an anxious plucked figure in “Dança dos Martelos,” and as Freitas begins to merge the two motifs, he hits the lower octaves, which rattle with prepared shells. Throughout, he applies little trills and plays riffs that feel regressive, gradual with the left hand while the right still scatters pixie dust. Neatness and precision have always been some of his greatest strengths, and it's fascinating to hear him complicate his own penchant for order.
While these experiments are moving Yes farther from jazz and closer to the spirit of both indigenous Amazonian music and the avant-garde classical realm, Freitas engages in spirited conversations with a series of guests in the album's second half, bringing to mind the open world of McCoy Tyner . Extensions. He simmers Jeff Parker's striking guitar in a red-eyed, late-night groove on “Mar de Cirandeiras,” while on “Gloriosa,” he brings Brandee Younger's harp glissandos down to earth with a single note that hits over and over again.
