Focusing The Spotlight: A Little Bit More About Paulinho Garcia

Our current Spotlight Artist, Paulinho Garcia, brings a lifetime of experience with Brazilian music into his current recording My Very Life. His fluid understanding of the overall spectrum of Brazilian rhythms lets him reach beyond the standard worlds of bossa nova and Rio samba to include baião, marcha rancho, and more. He integrates these genres into his compositions with a natural ease, finding creative routes of expression through these worlds. His guitar playing sits comfortably in this setting, comping with a rhythmic momentum through a sea of rich harmonic progressions. Garcia’s voice affords him a flexible instrument that glides through a wide range with Portuguese lyrics or ample scatting abilities. All these elements come together strongly on the recording, as Garcia matches his skills against a variety of musical collaborators. A long time member of Chicago’s musical community, Garcia performs as a solo artist, but also works as a member of several groups that focus upon Brazilian music. The group Two For Brazil matches Garcia with saxophonist Greg Fishman, creating an open context for exploring the crossroads between jazz and Brazilian styles. Garcia’s work with vocalist Grazyna Auguscik allows him to stretch his vocal skills as the two singers delicately interpret Brazilian Jazz classics. There’s a lot of music in Garcia, a fact that he shows on My Very Life, and continues in a variety of performing contexts.

Exploring Garcia’s music means a dedicated inroads into Brazilian music, and fortunately there’s a wealth of places to walk into world online. Garcia’s website hosts a lot of great information about his multiple projects, recordings, and schedule, not to mention some videos and pictures. You can check out Garcia’s page on the Chicago Sessions website, a great organization that has helped create a series of albums produced by Chicago musicians - an incredible reflection of their vibrant jazz scene. Become one of Garcia’s friends at his MySpace page, while taking the opportunity to read his bio, watch some videos and listen to music. You can also check out some of Garcia’s other projects through their CDBaby pages - find recordings from Garcia and Auguscik HERE and check out music from Two For Brazil HERE. Garcia creates some incredible versions of Brazilian Jazz, so leap into the web and check out some of his music, it will be well-worth your surfing time.

Garcia’s music offers a serious entry point into some great Brazilian music, so take the time to check out My Very Life. In order to help you get to know him better, I’ve included some biographical information about Garcia below, gathered from some of his different sites. Keep scrolling down after the bio and you’ll find a couple of videos that let you experience Garcia’ musical mastery for yourself. Take the time to check out Garcia’s music on My Very Life and beyond - fans of Brazilian Jazz will be hooked. Enjoy!

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May 1st, 1979 Paulinho Garcia arrived in Chicago, Illinois, USA. That was the beginning of a new life and a re-start of his musical career. With him were his wife Maria Angelina Seta Garcia (Teka) and his 5 years old son Paulo Garcia Junior. Teka passed way in December 1996 but her children Paulo Garcia Junior and Paula Setta Garcia and 3 grandchildren Elias, Eliana and Eliza Garcia survive her. Paulinho was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on August 16th, 1948 from father Heitor Gianizelli Garcia and mother Isabel da Silva Garcia. His first contact with music came very early in life, around 9 years old, when he started singing in a Sunday’s children program at Radio Inconfidencia in his hometown. In his teens he played first the drums and then moved to the bass, which became his main instrument until 1991 when he then switch to the guitar. Paulinho was well known in his hometown as a jingle composer, arranger and performer. He led the band “Os Agitadores” for many years, one of the top bands in the TV program “Brasa 4” and played bass for the Celio Balona group, a wedding band and the house band at Emissoras Associadas TV Itacolomi-Radio Guarani. Before coming to the USA Paulinho under graduated in Physics and was pursuing electrical engineering at the Universidade Federal de Belo Horizonte. Being a self taught musician Paulinho started his bassist career when an amateur band needed a bass player at the last minute and Paulinho took the instrument. About two years later, already a well-known bass player and the house musician for the television network Paulinho was asked by a famous bassist touring his town if he could borrow his instrument, it was then that Paulinho found out that all that time he was playing with his own tuning since he used the bass as it was, out-tuned, when he first started. It didn’t take long to re-learn the right way though. Paulinho was 16 when his father got him a used guitar in a trade. Not knowing anything about the instrument he tried very hard to play his first chords by watching other guitar players but little he knew that the difficulty in getting a clear sound was due a bent neck which made the action of the strings too high. Besides the problem he learned many songs on that guitar and on 1973 his wife present him with a Di Giorgio guitar and from then on playing was comparably a breezy.

In 1978 some of his friends musicians moved to Chicago and the opportunity to come to the USA came through his long time friend and drummer Dedé Sampaio who was at the time playing for Breno Sauer Brazilian Sounds. In need of a bass player Breno arranged a working visa for Paulinho and the band Made in Brazil was formed. Paulinho played with Made in Brazil until 1991 when he started his own band Jazzmineiro whose eponymous 1996 CD received excellent reviews in the Chicago Tribune, Jazziz magazine, the Brazilian Music Review, and The Brazilians. (…Paulinho ought to be considered a Chicago treasure… Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune) Also in the mid 90’s Paulinho for 5 years lead a 20-piece carnaval band for the Brazilian cultural center of Chicago for their annual carnaval party, one of the largest and best organized in the USA. Paulinho performs and records as a solo musician, with his group Jazzmineiro and three well-know duos: Two for Brazil with Greg Fishman, Dois no Choro with Julie Koidin and Paulinho Garcia-Grazyna Auguscik duo. He is a world-touring musician performing in renowned theaters, jazz festivals and clubs in Asia, Europe and America. With Greg Fishman Paulinho was the winner of the 2001 best jazz entertainer ward given by the Chicago music awards. His 50 years of Bossa Nova concert at the Chicago Millennium Park on July 24th 2008 alongside João Donato was seen by a record audience of 12000 people and in December of the same year he shared the famous Esplanade Hall stage in Singapore with Jeremy Monteiro and Toots Tielemans for a sold out audience of 1600 people. He has been regularly performing in Poland with Grazyna Auguscik and in many prestigious jazz festivals such as the North Sea jazz festival in Holland, Elite and Fujitsu jazz festivals in Japan, Singapore jazz festival, Jazz w museum and Jazz nad Odrq in Poland, Central Pennsylvania friends of jazz, North Beach and Sarasota jazz fest in the USA just to mention a few. He has also performed many times at the jazz cruise and jazz party at sea. Paulinho is also a clinician and has given workshops and concerts at many prestigious universities such as Northwestern, Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Cornell, Hope College, etc. and in June-July of 2009 he’ll be teaching at the Moscow College of Improvised Music. Paulinho presently teaches Brazilian guitar and vocals at Old Town School of folk music and coaches a Brazilian combo at Roosevelt University.