Esperanto / Toca Antonio Carlo

Far Out Recordings present a second album from Victor Assis Brasil from the treasure trove of the Quartin Records catalog, Esperanto, originally released in 1976. Over the course of the 1960s, Roberto Quartin released more than 20 albums in Brazil on his label Forma. Selling the rights of Forma to Polygram in 1969, Quartin struck out for pastures new at the dawn of the 1970s with the launch of his self-titled label. Significant works and high-water marks for Brazilian music overall followed in that decade's first year. These singular gems in Brazilian music, difficult to categorize, yet compellingly beautiful, have for too long gone unheard. Gifted his first saxophone by his aunt at the age of fourteen, only four years later the determined young musician, Victor Assis Brasil recorded his debut album, with a second to follow only a year later. The prodigious young carioca was subsequently granted a place to study at Berklee College of Music, where he played alongside the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Chick Corea, and Ron Carter. It was also during this period he recorded Esperanto and Toca Antonio Carlos Jobim with Roberto Quartin, upon returning to Brazil in the summer of 1970. Recorded in the same sessions as the Toca Antonio Carlos Jobim album, Esperanto consists of five deep jazz cuts: original compositions except for a heavy-swinging Latin-jazz cover of Jimmy Heath's Ginger Bread Boy, alongside more moments of wild frenetic jazz, like Quarenta Graus A Sombra, amongst more melancholic, but no less captivating compositions like Marilia and Ao Amigo Quartin. Esperanto's influences span both American continents, finding a meeting point for Latin jazz and North American post-bop, with Roberto Quartin's perfectionist approach to sound elevating the already incandescent music to divine new heights. The band consists of some mercurial greats of Brazilian music: Dom Salvador bass, Edison Machado drums, Helio Delmiro guitar, and Edson Lobo Bass. Victor Assis Brasil passed away aged just thirty-five, due to a rare circulatory disease, but by this point his status was already cemented as one of the most talented musicians in Brazil's history. This double-CD is contains both Esperanto and Toca Antonio Carlos Jobim previously only made available by Far Out Recordings on vinyl, as well as two bonus tracks: previously unreleased alternative versions of Marilia and Ao Amigo Quartin.