Behind the Scenes of Forró Sem Palavras at Instrumental Sesc Brasil
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 20 hours ago
Some audiovisual records document a performance. Others reveal the ideas, relationships, and paths that made the music possible.
The documentary SescTV produced about my work belongs to the second category. Created for the series Passagem de Som, the film follows the preparations for a Forró Sem Palavras performance at Instrumental Sesc Brasil and brings composition, arranging, orchestral practice, dance, and Brazilian music into conversation.
Alongside rehearsals and excerpts from the concert, the documentary features interviews with Nelson Ayres and Paulo Braga, two musicians who played important roles in my education and in the way I came to understand the work of composers and arrangers.
A Documentary Between the Stage and the Dance Floor
The filming took place in two very different settings.
The concert was held on January 16, 2024, at Teatro Anchieta at Sesc Consolação in São Paulo. I conducted Orquestra Popular de Câmara, a 13-piece ensemble, in a program that brought together original compositions and my arrangements of works connected to forró and Brazilian music.
On one side was the Instrumental Sesc Brasil stage, where Orquestra Popular de Câmara had gathered to perform my arrangements. On the other was Brasuca Multicultural in Barão Geraldo, Campinas, where I led a workshop devoted to the relationship between music and dance in forró.
The alternation between these spaces helps reveal a central question in the project: how can the collective energy and physical impulse of forró be preserved when its language is developed through composition, arranging, and writing for a large instrumental ensemble?
Xote, xaxado, baião, and other rhythms from this musical world do not appear merely as stylistic references. They shape articulation, accentuation, phrasing, the organization of instrumental layers, and the musicians’ very relationship with time.
This is where dance also becomes a way of listening.
Forró Sem Palavras and the Orchestra as an Instrument
Forró Sem Palavras grew from a desire to explore forró as an instrumental language capable of existing in different ensembles and contexts without losing its connection to celebration, movement, and social experience.
→ Read also: Forró Sem Palavras: Building Bridges Between Forró, Jazz, Concert Music, and the Contexts Where Music Lives
In the documentary, I try to summarize my relationship with this process in a single sentence:
“The orchestra is my instrument.”
The statement does not simply mean that I write for many instruments. It describes a way of thinking musically.
When I work with an orchestra or chamber ensemble, every musician participates in a larger structure. Strings, winds, accordion, double bass, drums, and percussion do not function only as separate blocks. Their entrances, breathing, articulations, and combinations form a single sonic organism.
Composition creates the material. Arranging distributes functions, establishes relationships, and transforms an idea into a collective experience. Conducting organizes that construction in the real time of rehearsal and performance.
Four Hours of Rehearsal for an Entire Concert
One of the moments that best reveals the reality behind this performance came during the rehearsal:
“We have a ninety-minute show and four hours to rehearse. That works out to about twenty minutes per piece.”
Before reaching the musicians, each arrangement had spent dozens of hours existing only in the score and in my imagination. During the rehearsal, all that work had to become sound very quickly.
The situation demanded objectivity. I needed to hear the first reading, recognize what was already working, identify problems, adjust articulations, and decide which details could genuinely transform the interpretation within the available time.
This is a rarely visible aspect of the composer’s and arranger’s work. Writing does not end when the score is complete. It continues in rehearsal, in listening to the musicians, and in the decisions made under the concrete conditions of each project.
What Dance Teaches Us About Music
Although Forró Sem Palavras focuses on music and listening, its relationship with dance has never been secondary.
Dancing makes perceptible elements that often remain abstract when considered only through a score. The body senses the length of a phrase, the preparation for a change, the weight of a beat, and the difference between anticipating and delaying a particular movement.
In the workshop documented in the film, part of the work involved movements organized in advance. Another part explored how participants could respond freely to what they heard. In this context, improvisational practices became part of both dance and musical listening, allowing each person to react to the rhythm, the partner’s lead, and the transformations in the music.
This relationship also influences my writing. The point is not to reduce forró to a sequence of rhythmic patterns, but to understand how those patterns come alive when they pass through the body and through interaction among people.
Paulo Braga and an Early Interest in Musical Writing
My education at Unicamp was shaped by encounters with different ways of thinking about popular music, composition, and arranging.
Paulo Braga, a pianist, composer, and educator, had taught at the university before I enrolled. As he explains in the documentary, he first heard about my work through Mário Campos, the professor who succeeded him:
“That was when I heard about Rafael, a saxophonist who was very interested in this whole writing thing.”
His observation documents something already present at the beginning of my path. Although the saxophone was part of my education, my curiosity was increasingly directed toward constructing music: imagining instrumental combinations, organizing ideas, and discovering how a piece could take on new dimensions through arranging.
Years later, Paulo would play piano on Pelos Ares, the Orquestra Urbana album, and in the Forró Sem Palavras Sinfônico concert with the Campinas Municipal Symphony Orchestra. We would later work together again on other projects. Over time, that early point of reference developed into an artistic collaboration.
Nelson Ayres and the Education of an Arranger
In 2011, Nelson Ayres took part in the Artist-in-Residence Program at Unicamp, directing an orchestra and teaching an arranging course. I was one of the students in that project.
In the documentary, he recalls that encounter:
“He really stood out. He was the only guy who was genuinely interested in it, who wanted to become an arranger and already had music written.”
At another point, Nelson comments on the time required to become an arranger:
“It is very rare for a young person to be an arranger, because they have not had time to study all of that. But he threw himself into it. He really studied, took it seriously, worked hard, and became a tremendous arranger as well as a composer.”
The value of these words lies in more than recognition. They help explain why arranging became such an important part of my path.
Learning to write for large ensembles requires time, study, and practical experience. It means knowing the instruments, understanding their combinations, and developing enough clarity to communicate an idea to the people who must transform it into sound. Every rehearsal teaches something that no book or isolated exercise could provide.
My experience with musicians such as Nelson Ayres and Paulo Braga placed my education within a living tradition of Brazilian instrumental music, one built through writing, listening, the stage, and the transmission of knowledge across generations.
Instrumental Sesc Brasil: A Platform for Instrumental Music
The Forró Sem Palavras performance was part of Instrumental Sesc Brasil, an initiative devoted to producing, documenting, and presenting Brazilian instrumental music. Held at Teatro Anchieta at Sesc Consolação, the concert was also broadcast live on the project’s YouTube channel.
This context was especially meaningful for Forró Sem Palavras. Orquestra Popular de Câmara brought together strings, winds, accordion, and a Brazilian rhythm section in an instrumentation that could unite chamber and orchestral resources with the pulse of forró.
By documenting the rehearsal, the concert, and the stories surrounding the music, SescTV preserved more than a performance. The film made visible an artistic process developed over many years, from my education at Unicamp to projects realized in Brazil and the United States.
A Record and a Point of Continuity
Revisiting this documentary today means returning to a particular moment in my path, but also recognizing questions that continue to guide my work.
How can Brazilian music be written for orchestral ensembles without neutralizing its rhythmic identity? How can written music coexist with the musicians’ flexibility? How can we create music that rewards focused listening in a concert and, in another setting, invites the audience to dance?
Forró Sem Palavras remains a space for investigating these questions.
The documentary captures one moment in this continuing path: the musicians gathered together, the limited rehearsal time, the music leaving the page, and dance returning its collective dimension to the sound.
Information About the Documentary and Concert
Documentary: Passagem de Som, about Forró Sem Palavras
Featured artist: Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Audiovisual production: SescTV
Music series: Instrumental Sesc Brasil
Concert: Forró Sem Palavras
Performance date: January 16, 2024
Venue: Teatro Anchieta, Sesc Consolação, São Paulo
Ensemble: Orquestra Popular de Câmara, with 13 musicians
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima’s roles: composition, arranging, music direction, and conducting
Additional recordings: rehearsal and recording of two tracks with members of Orquestra Popular de Câmara (“Maracaião” and “Inconsciente”)
Additional filming location: Brasuca Multicultural in Barão Geraldo, Campinas
Interviewees: Nelson Ayres and Paulo Braga
Continue Exploring
Explore the Forró Forró Sem Palavras
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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 at the intersection of Brazilian music, jazz, and orchestral writing. His work also encompasses recording production, research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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