Great Canadian-Brazilian music coming to Ottawa this Saturday (July 8, 2023). See you there!
Plus, my own interpretations of bossa-nova classics in Russian.
This event announcement comes from a good old friend of mine, an award-nominated Canadian producer and singer-songwriter, Rachel Beausoleil, with whom I used to play and sing at our daughters’ school 15 years ago (you can watch a video of one of such performances in Appendix below) . I am not a professional singer or musician (I’m Data Scientist, who built excess death tracking Web App, as you know), but she is and a very talented one.
This Saturday (July 8 at 7:30) in Ottawa, she and her band will be giving a very special concert - dedicated to her latest two albums that she recorded during the p(l)andemic with her Brazilian musicians friends. You can read more about it and buy the tickets by clicking on the poster below.
What this music is to me:
For me, Rachel's bossa-nova music is particularly special. Here's why.
As some of you know, I've been a big fan of bossa-nova since my student years in Moscow in the early nineties, where I learned to play it on the guitar (it's a well-known 1/2 + 1/2 | 1/4 + 1/2 + 1/4 beat).
I did not understand Portuguese, and I always felt this beautiful music in my own way—in my words, in my mother tongue—which I’d been dreaming of one day putting into writing. That dream came true in 2019 when I published my interpretations of Antonio Carlos Jobim's songs in a songbook entitled “Shri Jobim” published on Bookdown (bookdown.org/gorodnichy/jobim).
I also made a few of my own recordings for some of these songs, with acoustic guitar and synthesizer, together with my wife Alexandra. You can find some of them on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms.
Enjoy! And see some of you at the Rachel’s concert on Saturday!
Appendix
Rachel used to organize “Boîte à chanson” concerts at the school our daughters attended. Below is one of the recordings from those events, where I played, joined by my brother and niece, performing songs in French, Russian, and Ukrainian.