On Saturday, September 19, Safina Center Creative Affiliate Paul Winter and friends will celebrate the Autumn Equinox with a live stream concert from his barn in the hills of Northwest Connecticut. The concert will be at 12 noon, EDT. You will be able to watch the live stream on Paul’s website here: https://www.paulwinter.com/autumnequinoxlivestreamconcert

Paul writes: “This will be our first-ever celebration of this milestone, the time of year when the day and night are of equal length, marking the end of summer and beginning of autumn. This mid-point inspired us to schedule the concert for midday. 

This is a time of harvest, when people traditionally have expressed gratitude for the abundance of the growing season. And it also is a time that has inspired reflection on balance in our lives. 

Pondering how to symbolize these two themes with our music, the thought of harvest brought to mind diversity, and how just as biodiversity is essential for an ecosystem, cultural diversity has long been a great hallmark of our country. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,’ is the welcoming message of our Statue of Liberty.

The idea of balance led me to reflect on the duality between our two Americas, North and South, which together had long been regarded by Europeans as the ‘New World.’ I imagined this as a framework for our program, interweaving music from Brazil, representing South America, with music from the United States, in the North. I have always been fascinated with the parallels between our two countries, being that we are of similar size, and each defined by a rainbow of cultural heritage.

So we have created a new six-member ‘Multi-Cultural Equinox Consort’ for this event, comprising three players steeped in the Brazilian musical traditions — keyboardist Henrique Eisenmann from Rio de Janeiro, drummer Rogerio Boccato from São Paulo, and bassist Peter Slavov (who is actually from Bulgaria) — along with three of us from the U.S. — vocalist Theresa Thomason, bassoonist Jeff Boratko, and myself on soprano sax. 

I want to focus on the Brazilian music, and tell you a bit about my own experiences with music in Brazil, and to also share a playlist of three free download tracks. 

My love for this music began the first time I heard a recording by João Gilberto, in 1962, that introduced me to the unique new Brazilian genre that they called Bossa Nova, or New Touch. 

Later that year, I got to visit Brazil for the first time, with my jazz sextet, during a six-month State Department tour of Latin America. We spent a month touring 13 cities in Brazil, and bossa nova music was blossoming, and we were beguiled by it. When we got home we recorded an album for Columbia Records called Jazz Meets the Bossa Nova. First in this playlist is a track from that album — ‘Voce e Eu’ (You and I).

In the mid '60s I returned to Brazil by myself and lived there about a year, during which I made albums with Carlos Lyra and other Brazilian musicians. One musician I met was a wonderful young guitarist named Oscar Castro-Neves, who soon after that came to live in the US, and became a kind of member-at-large of the new band I then formed that I called "Consort." The second track in this playlist is another Carlos Lyra song, a recording I made with Oscar from an album called Brazilian Days — ‘Se e Tarde Me Perdoa’ (Forgive Me if I'm Late).

Brazil has many genres of music that I came to love. Another is their dynamic carnival music, and we will also feature some of this music in our Autumn Equinox concert this Saturday. The third track is a carnival song we recorded with Oscar Castro-Neves — ‘Street Corner Samba.’”

The live stream concert is free, but donations toward Paul’s production costs will be gratefully accepted via Paypal and Patreon. RSVP here, and get a link to the stream sent straight to your inbox.