How I Found My Place Between Brazilian Music, Orchestral Composition, and Jazz
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 12
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
For many years, the same question kept coming up in different situations. It would come up in conversations after concerts, interviews, presentations of new projects, and meetings with other musicians. It also came up frequently when people from other fields learned that I worked as a composer. The question seemed simple: what kind of music do you write?
The categories most commonly used to answer that question never seemed to fully describe the kinds of projects that interested me. From an early age, Brazilian music, jazz, and concert music naturally coexisted in the way I listened. Composition was always at the center of that interest. Depending on the project, it expanded into arranging, music direction, conducting, research, or artistic production.
Throughout my university education, and in the classifications commonly used to describe music, these traditions were usually presented as relatively separate worlds.
A Question That Kept Appearing in Different Places
When I entered UNICAMP to study composition, that question was already present.
While studying composition and concert music, I was also developing a growing interest in improvisation, Brazilian instrumental music, jazz, and the projects that emerged from the meeting of those different musical traditions.
The university itself reflected a fairly common division: on one side, programs rooted in the concert music tradition; on the other, programs focused on popular music. Many of the questions that interested me most emerged precisely between those two fields.
The same curiosity shaped my research on the language of the Brazilian big band, the ensembles I created during my university years, and my first experiences writing for orchestras. It was also present in many of the artists and projects that most captured my attention as both a listener and a researcher.
When the Question Became Research
During my doctoral studies at the University of Miami, that same question became the focus of my research.
The title of my dissertation reflected that concern directly: Blurred Distinctions.
The title refers to the idea of boundaries becoming blurred, evoking the image of something slightly out of focus, whose contours are no longer perfectly defined. The research examined the difference between the way music is commonly classified and the way it is actually created.
Musical categories help organize knowledge, support teaching, and guide discussions about music. Creative processes, however, do not always follow those same divisions so neatly. Using the relationship between jazz and concert music as its starting point, the dissertation examined processes of convergence, mutual influence, and hybridization between musical traditions.
Underlying that research was a broader question that continues to interest me today: to what extent do the boundaries we use to organize music actually reflect the way music is created?
A Question That Continues in Professional Practice
Many of the composition projects I have developed for big band, orchestra, chamber music, and different ensembles connected to Brazilian music grew out of similar questions. In many of them, the work also involved arranging, music direction, conducting, research, or artistic production.
What happens when references, creative approaches, and practices associated with different musical traditions begin to coexist within the same project?
At different moments in my career, that search has taken very different forms. It was present in my graduation recital, which brought together the UNICAMP Symphony Orchestra and Coletivo Orquestral, a big band made up of students and faculty members, for a symphonic jazz concert. It later appeared in the creation of Orquestra Urbana, a project dedicated to original music for big band. And it continues to shape projects such as Forró Sem Palavras, which over the years has been presented in settings ranging from chamber ensembles to symphony orchestras.
Between Categories and Artistic Practice
The question, “What kind of music do you write?” has never had a simple answer. No single definition seems sufficient. Different projects have taken different forms throughout my career, but they have often been driven by the same underlying questions. Brazilian music, jazz, concert music, improvisation, composition, music direction, and writing for large ensembles gradually converged into a shared set of questions that continues to reappear from one project to the next.
The questions that inspired my dissertation were already present in the musical interests that accompanied me from the beginning of my education, and they continue to shape the projects I develop today.
The research emerged from an attempt to better understand a creative territory I was already inhabiting in practice: a space where different musical languages, traditions, and artistic projects continue to interact in ways that rarely fit within a single category.
About the Author
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is a composer, arranger, music director, and educator. A Latin Grammy-nominated composer and recipient of multiple international awards, including 13 DownBeat Awards and honors from ASCAP, he develops artistic projects that connect Brazilian music, jazz, orchestral writing, improvisation, recording production, research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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