What My Research on Proveta and Banda Mantiqueira Taught Me About Musical Language
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 17
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 25
What makes Banda Mantiqueira sound like Banda Mantiqueira?
If you are not yet familiar with the group, a brief introduction may be helpful. Banda Mantiqueira is one of Brazil’s leading large instrumental ensembles built around wind sections. Active since the early 1990s, it has built one of the country’s most acclaimed and enduring bodies of work in this format. In 1998, its debut album, Aldeia, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album.
Part of the group’s importance lies in the musical language it developed. Its music brings together elements of samba, choro, forró, wind bands from towns in Brazil’s interior, and other Brazilian traditions, in dialogue with writing techniques associated with the big band tradition. These influences can be heard in the arrangements, the instrumentation, and the performance style developed by the musicians.
Banda Mantiqueira emerged in São Paulo from a group of musicians who already shared experiences and references, in an initiative led by Nailor Azevedo, known as Proveta. This combination of sustained collective work, Proveta’s writing, and the instrumentalists’ experience helped define the sound of Banda Mantiqueira.
The way this language took shape in the arrangements performed by Banda Mantiqueira is precisely what led me to choose Proveta’s work with the group as the focus of my undergraduate research. I wanted to understand how that music was constructed and what role Proveta’s writing played in creating its sound.
The project, titled The Brazilian Big Band: Samba Compositions and Arrangements by Nailor Azevedo (Proveta) for Banda Mantiqueira, was conducted at the Institute of Arts at UNICAMP between June 2010 and May 2011. It was supported by FAPESP under grant number 2009/15878-6 and supervised by Professor Antônio Rafael Carvalho dos Santos.
The project focused on three works composed and/or arranged by Proveta for Banda Mantiqueira: Vovô Manuel, composed and arranged by Proveta himself; a suite based on Dorival Caymmi’s O Samba da Minha Terra and Saudade da Bahia; and Prêt-à-Porter de Tafetá, by João Bosco and Aldir Blanc. The latter two were arranged by Proveta.
At the time, I was studying composition at UNICAMP, performing with the Coletivo Orquestral, and already developing my own work for large ensembles. Banda Mantiqueira was one of the leading Brazilian ensembles in that musical world, so trying to understand how its music was constructed felt like a natural path.
To conduct the research, I reconstructed full scores from the individual parts used by the musicians, compared this material with the recordings, and interviewed Proveta about the arrangements and the history of the band. The project gave me a concrete case through which to examine the relationships among writing, interpretation, musical experience, and the musicians’ shared practice.
These relationships resurfaced at other points in my career: in the reorchestrations I prepared for my Popular Music graduation recital, in the work I developed while studying at the University of Miami, and later in the creation of Orquestra Urbana.
Looking back on this path brings me to two questions that remain central to my work: how do compositional and arranging choices help build a musical language, and how does that language take shape through the interpretation of specific musicians?
Between the Music I Admired and a Language of My Own
Looking back, it is tempting to reinterpret that research as part of a conscious search for an artistic language of my own.
But that would not be an accurate description. I was not consciously trying to define a personal language. I wanted to understand musical languages I admired, expand my resources as a composer, and learn why certain groups sounded the way they did.
What first attracted me to Banda Mantiqueira was the musical result itself. I was fascinated by the sound of the arrangements, the way the musicians played, the recordings, and the possibilities the group explored within that musical language. I also wanted to take part in that world and create music that could enter into dialogue with it, incorporating some of those elements into my own writing.
That world was not entirely removed from my own practice. I played in a gafieira dance band, participated in Brazilian instrumental music groups, and was already working with repertoire and musicians connected to Brazilian music. In some ways, my own music-making coexisted with the environment in which Banda Mantiqueira had developed. Even so, I saw the group’s work as an opportunity to learn, assimilate new ideas, and find inspiration.
The research grew out of that place. If I wanted to write Brazilian music for large ensembles, I needed a deeper understanding of the possibilities within that language and of how I might incorporate them into my own work as a composer and arranger.
The curiosity was similar to what many musicians experience during their training: how is this sound constructed? What musical choices led to this result? What gave this music its particular character? Banda Mantiqueira brought many of these questions together in a single subject of study.
Writing Within a Musical Language
The research centered on three main questions: which compositional and arranging procedures Proveta used when writing for Banda Mantiqueira; what gave his writing its identity; and to what extent it could be considered original in comparison with both Brazilian music and the North American big band tradition. To answer these questions, I needed to examine how the different elements of the music interacted and contributed to the sound of Banda Mantiqueira.
The scores were fundamental to this investigation. My analysis sought to understand the different elements involved in the musical construction of the arrangements. I examined how Proveta created and developed phrases and melodies, wrote counterpoint, orchestrated lines across instruments and sections, constructed chord voicings, shaped the form of the arrangements, and incorporated solos and improvisers into their structure, among other aspects.
The techniques used at these different levels of the writing were not new in themselves. They belonged to an established technical vocabulary employed in different ways by many other composers and arrangers.
The work’s singularity emerged in the nuances and the refinement with which Proveta selected and combined these resources in his writing, as well as in the way they took shape through the musicians of Banda Mantiqueira, in dialogue with the traditions of Brazilian instrumental music.
One of its clearest features was the attention given to the individual direction of each line. Rather than organizing sections primarily through block voicings, a traditional and highly effective big band writing technique, Proveta often constructed an arrangement by considering the path of each individual voice. The phrases had a direction of their own, while the texture and harmony emerged from the interaction among these lines. Voice leading thus functioned as one of the arrangement’s organizing principles.
This feature was also connected to how he described his process during our interview. Proveta wrote with the musicians who would perform the arrangements in mind, considering the individual line each of them would receive.
His writing was also connected to a broader musical culture. The choices found in the arrangements reflected experiences rooted in wind bands from Brazil’s interior, dance bands, choro circles, and other settings in which Brazilian music was practiced and passed from one musician to another.
During our interview, Proveta spoke about artistic questions he had discussed with other musicians throughout his career. As a younger saxophonist, he had also been drawn to the language of jazz and had pursued a sound associated with the North American musicians he admired. Over time, he began to ask what his own contribution within that world might be.
In his account, the creation of Banda Mantiqueira emerged as a response to this process. The group made it possible to pursue a language more closely connected to Brazilian music, to his own history, and to the musicians around him.
Over the course of the research, I came to understand more clearly how this background manifested itself in Proveta’s writing and in the way the musicians of the band played. Technical analysis and musical experience were not separate concerns. Melodic construction, harmonic progressions, contrapuntal lines, formal architecture, orchestration, and articulation were the means through which a way of making music emerged, one connected to a cultural history, shared experiences, and the traditions of Brazilian instrumental music.
What Wasn't in the Score
Reconstructing the full scores became one of the central stages of the research. Until then, I had expected to work from complete scores. The available materials, however, were the individual parts used by the musicians. Proveta had written the three arrangements directly into these parts, without first preparing a full score as a reference. By assembling them into complete scores and then reviewing the results with him, I was able to observe more precisely what had been captured in the notation and what depended on knowledge shared among the musicians.
Not everything that made Banda Mantiqueira sound like Banda Mantiqueira was written down. Articulation, phrasing, the way certain passages were accented, and the interpretation of particular rhythms circulated primarily through musical practice. This information was shared among musicians who knew the language.
A Question That Deepened Through Other Projects
The research brought the relationship between writing and performance into sharper focus, and this question continued to mature through subsequent projects as I worked with different musicians, ensembles, and contexts. I began to observe more closely how much of a work’s identity can be defined in the score and how much depends on the experiences and choices of the musicians who interpret it.
This relationship became especially clear in 2011, during my Popular Music graduation recital. For that performance, I reorchestrated Prêt-à-Porter de Tafetá and the suite based on O Samba da Minha Terra and Saudade da Bahia for a symphonic jazz ensemble that brought together the UNICAMP Symphony Orchestra and the Coletivo Orquestral.
My goal was to preserve as much of the original writing as possible. It quickly became clear, however, that the same music produced different results when performed by musicians with different backgrounds, habits, and traditions.
These differences had several sources. Some came from the change in instrumentation: lines that worked naturally on the instruments for which they had been written could become far more challenging when transferred to others. Other differences were connected to the performers’ familiarity with the language. The way certain samba articulations were played, for example, required a kind of experience that not every musician had developed in the same way. This experience made some of the observations that had emerged during the research especially tangible.
Writing Also Means Choosing Who You Write For
Years later, this question resurfaced during my studies at the University of Miami. I was studying Jazz Composition in a department devoted to that language, surrounded every day by musicians with extensive experience of jazz repertoire, articulation, phrasing, and performance practices.
I did write some works connected to Brazilian music during that period. Even so, I recognized that this kind of writing often required introducing the musicians to a language in which they did not have the same accumulated experience. It was not simply a matter of playing the notes correctly. Certain articulations, accents, and approaches to rhythm depended on a familiarity developed through listening and practice over time.
In that context, it made more sense to use the opportunity to explore the language those musicians knew best. Much of the music I produced for big band in Miami consequently moved closer to the world of jazz. This did not mean that I had abandoned my interest in Brazilian music. It was a choice shaped by the people around me and by the musical possibilities of that environment.
This is a consideration I continue to bring to my projects. When I begin a composition or an arrangement, I think about who will perform the music, the languages those musicians know, and the individual qualities they can bring to the work. The same applies when I create a project and decide whom to invite. In some cases, the language of the project guides the choice of musicians. In others, the musicians themselves and their individual qualities help define the project’s musical direction.
Creating an Ecosystem
This reflection on the relationship among writing, musicians, and musical language was also present in the creation of Orquestra Urbana. When assembling the group, I began with both the music I wanted to create and the people who could explore and develop that language with me.
Choosing the members involved more than simply filling the roles within an instrumental ensemble. I considered each musician’s command of particular musical languages, their interpretive qualities, and their affinity with the project’s musical aims. I also thought about which soloists and improvisers had approaches that could enter into dialogue with the pieces I had already written and the repertoire I hoped to develop.
These choices helped create not only an ensemble but also an environment in which particular musical languages could be practiced, deepened, and developed collectively. This environment provided the foundation for the concerts and album recordings we produced over the years, while also influencing the music I began to write for Orquestra Urbana.
From Undergraduate Research to My Doctorate
The analysis of the arrangements and my understanding of Proveta’s writing techniques remain central to what I learned from the undergraduate research project. The research allowed me to examine systematically how compositional and arranging choices work together to form a coherent approach to writing, and how that writing relates to the musicians and interpretive traditions that give it sonic form.
I had already begun to perceive this relationship in the music I was writing and in the groups I performed with, but my understanding was still largely intuitive. Studying the writing for Banda Mantiqueira and working directly with Proveta, one of the leading figures in Brazilian instrumental music, allowed me to deepen and organize that reflection.
Similar questions resurfaced years later during my doctoral research, in the interviews I conducted with composers and arrangers for my study of hybrid and confluent styles. The subject and context were different, but I remained interested in understanding how musical languages meet, change, and acquire recognizable characteristics in the work of particular artists and artistic communities.
Listen to the Composition Inspired by This Research
A few years after completing the research, I had the opportunity to turn some of these reflections into music.
Samba de Proveta grew out of my admiration for Nailor Azevedo’s work and the questions about musical language that I explored more deeply during my research on the arrangements of Banda Mantiqueira. The composition was recorded on Pelos Ares, Orquestra Urbana’s first album, and featured Proveta himself as a guest soloist.
In a way, this recording brought the journey full circle: research that began at the university eventually led to an artistic collaboration with one of the musicians who had inspired the study from the beginning.
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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