Pelos Ares: Inside Orquestra Urbana’s First Album
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 6
- 24 min read
What Is Pelos Ares?
Recorded in 2015 and released in 2016, Pelos Ares was Orquestra Urbana’s first album.
The album brings together compositions written over the course of approximately eight years and documents an important period in my path as a composer, arranger, and music director. Recorded in 2015, the album gathers musical investigations that began during my formative years at Unicamp and continued throughout my master’s and doctoral studies at the University of Miami.
In addition to bringing together compositions written throughout that trajectory, the album documents the early years of Orquestra Urbana and the musical language developed by the group during that period.
The Graphic Art of the Booklet
The visual identity of Pelos Ares had an especially personal meaning for me. The drawings used in the booklet were created by my father, Joaquim Caetano de Lima Filho, an award-winning architect, university professor, and visual artist, who unfortunately is no longer with us.
When the album began to take shape, I invited my father to collaborate on the project’s visual identity. The band’s own name, Orquestra Urbana, naturally established a dialogue with the world of the city. It felt especially meaningful that this part of the project would be developed by someone who had dedicated a large part of his life to architecture, urbanism, drawing, and the creation of spaces.
In the kitchen of his house, there was a wall painted as a chalkboard, where he used to draw. In one of those moments, he created a sketch of a city on a hill. The image seemed to bring together, at the same time, a vertical perspective and something like a section or plan seen from above. It was as if the city could be observed simultaneously as landscape, architectural drawing, and imagined space.
After erasing part of the drawing, my father began photographing the marks and textures that remained on the chalkboard. Those images were used as the basis for different graphic elements in the booklet.
That handmade drawing eventually became the basis for the album artwork. We photographed the wall, and the image was used on the front and back covers of Pelos Ares. The textures of the line, the chalkboard, and the drawing also became the visual background material for other parts of the booklet.
I have always seen musical composition as a kind of architecture of sounds. For that reason, having my father take part in the visual construction of Orquestra Urbana’s first album made the project even more meaningful. The graphic art of Pelos Ares was born from a direct and indirect collaboration between music, drawing, city, memory, and affection.
Album Presentation Text
The text below was originally published on the back cover of Pelos Ares.
The city is a living museum which constantly changes. Similarly I believe that the work of an artist also reveals traces of his or her evolution. Just as urban spaces are rich environments for interaction, the same can be said about a composition which features improvisation. The improvisation may serve as a means to recreate the original composition.
It is in this spirit that I have chosen the repertoire recorded on this first CD with the ORQUESTRA URBANA (URBAN ORCHESTRA). I chose symbolic works from my trail of artistic development - the oldest written in 2007, and the latest finalized during the early days of the recording. All are brilliantly recorded by a few of my favorite musicians.
Just as cities are reconfigured over time, six of the seven recorded compositions have been revised over the years. And just as urban spaces are reinterpreted after every use, none of these recorded compositions will ever be performed this same way again. What a joy to imagine the possible new spaces that these sounds may occupy!
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
December 27, 2015
Gary Lindsay’s Liner Notes
The album’s presentation text was written by composer, arranger, and educator Gary Lindsay, my master’s and doctoral advisor in Jazz Composition at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, for the booklet of the original edition of Pelos Ares, published in 2016. Read it below.
I am honored to introduce Rafael Piccolotto de Lima on his large ensemble debut CD. This project is just one in a series of well-crafted musical statements this young artist has created. Throughout his tenure as a Master’s and Doctoral student in Jazz Writing at the Frost School of Music, he has arranged and composed music for jazz and classical chamber ensembles, big bands and symphony orchestra.
Born in Brazil, Rafael possesses a unique musical voice developed through his talent, hard work, self-motivation and many influences including Jazz, World Music, Contemporary Classical Music, Pop Music and naturally the Music of Brazil. Highlights of his work with the Henry Mancini Studio Orchestra include creative concert arrangements for guest soloists Chick Corea and Terence Blanchard.
Orquestra Urbana represents some of the finest players in Brazil. It is appropriately called an Orquestra rather than a Big Band because Rafael calls upon the musicians to play with an orchestral approach incorporating a wide variety of colors in the winds and brass. Tight ensembles, intricate counterpoint and exciting solos make Orquestra Urbana the perfect choice to introduce Rafael’s music. What a pleasure it is to hear them perform.
Sit back and enjoy this journey through Rafael’s musical imagery. This is just the beginning of a long adventure.
Gary Lindsay, 2016.
Grammy nominated arranger, composer, educator and author of Jazz Arranging Techniques: From Quartet to Big Band
How the Repertoire Became the Album
One important characteristic of Pelos Ares is that it was not originally conceived as an album.
The works that make up the record were born at different times, for different reasons, and often without any expectation that they would one day become part of the same project.
Some of them were written during my undergraduate years, while others emerged during my period of study in the United States. Some went through numerous revisions before the recording; others arrived in the studio relatively close to their original versions.
When the concrete opportunity to record an album appeared, the challenge was no longer to write a new body of repertoire. It became something else: looking back and understanding which works best represented that moment in my trajectory.
The album was built from that selection. The result was a repertoire made up of works written at different moments that, when seen together, help reveal the musical interests that guided my work during that period.
Before the Studio
The album was recorded in just a few days, but its history began long before we entered the studio. Much of the work that gave rise to Pelos Ares happened before that.
Many of these works had already been rehearsed and performed by Orquestra Urbana for some time. Some had gone through different versions, while others continued to change from rehearsal to rehearsal. The band became the main space where these works matured.
In addition to rehearsals, we had a relatively rare opportunity for an independent project of this scale: bringing this repertoire to the stage before the recording. During that period, Orquestra Urbana gave a series of performances in different cultural spaces, including Almanaque, in Campinas, the Campinas and Vila Mariana branches of Sesc, Jazz nos Fundos, and Central das Artes, in São Paulo.
Those performances were fundamental in allowing the arrangements to mature, consolidating the group’s language, and giving the musicians increasing familiarity with a repertoire that demanded a very particular interpretive approach. By the time we finally entered the studio, those works had already been tested and matured in performance.
I used to record rehearsals and performances whenever possible, then go home and listen to everything again a few days later. Many writing adjustments and revisions emerged in that interval, when it became possible to observe how certain ideas worked in practice and return to the scores with a different perspective. By the time we finally entered the studio, those works arrived much more mature.
The Tracks
Abertura Suburbana
Among all the works on the album, Abertura Suburbana is perhaps the one that most clearly synthesizes some of the ideas that were guiding my writing during that period.
The piece was composed in 2014, shortly after the ensemble’s debut, and grew directly out of my collaboration with the band’s musicians. The title itself plays with that idea: bringing an urban sound to the suburbs and the countryside, using maracatu as its point of departure. The work emerged from a desire to explore approaches to composition that would not necessarily depend on the traditional logic of theme and melodic development.
One of the central ideas was to treat the wind section as a kind of large maracatu percussion ensemble. The influence of the rhythm appears not as a direct quotation or an attempt to reproduce a traditional pattern, but as a way of thinking about energy, motion, and rhythmic construction. Much of the piece unfolds through the interaction of different rhythmic layers and the way they accumulate, reorganize themselves, and generate momentum.
Even today, I consider this one of the works that best represents my search for a Brazilian approach to writing for large ensembles that would not rely exclusively on already established models.
For that reason, it naturally became the opening track of the album. The piece begins with a sense of grandeur, driven by the alfaias and the brass, and gradually unfolds through contrasts, moments of suspense, and growing anticipation. It also became the opening piece for nearly every Orquestra Urbana performance.
Casa do Lago
Casa do Lago was originally composed for Coletivo Orquestral, Unicamp’s big band directed by Professor Mário Campos. Dedicated to him, the work was written during a period when the ensemble rehearsed regularly at Casa do Lago, a venue that was an important part of my musical education for many years and ultimately gave the composition its title.
Among the works on the album, this one marks one of my earliest explorations into continuous formal structures. Rather than organizing the music around a principal theme that returns throughout the piece, I sought to create a musical journey in which the material evolves and transforms continuously, without relying on a recurring formal structure. In some ways, the work resembles the idea of a fantasy, where the sense of direction emerges from the ongoing transformation of the musical material itself.
This was also one of the first works in which I began thinking of the improvising soloist as an integral part of the composition’s structure. Rather than reserving a single section for improvisation, I sought to create different musical settings for each intervention, allowing every solo to emerge naturally from the unfolding of the work and contribute to its musical narrative.
Looking back at it today, what strikes me is how many of the concerns that continue to shape my work were already clearly present in this piece. The relationship between continuity and transformation, the construction of extended formal trajectories, and the attempt to create a sense of direction that goes beyond the succession of local events remain among the interests that continue to guide my writing.
Quebra-Cabeças
Quebra-Cabeças was originally written for the Frost Recording Ensemble, a group at the Frost School of Music that, at the time, focused on contemporary jazz and fusion repertoire. Of all the pieces on the album, it is the boldest harmonically, moving away from more familiar harmonic paths and venturing into territory with an almost atonal character.
The piece was later expanded for big band and premiered in that format by the One O’Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas during the Jazz Education Network (JEN) Conference, where it received the Student Composition Showcase Award.
The piece emerged as a kind of compositional game of constructing, deconstructing, and reorganizing musical material. Melodic lines, harmonic progressions, and small musical gestures appear, disappear, return transformed, and take on new functions throughout the piece, almost like the pieces of a puzzle that continually fit together and rearrange themselves.
Rather than following a specific aesthetic, the work grew out of my curiosity to explore how far these processes could be taken within the context of a big band. The title itself refers to this approach to composition, in which order and disorder coexist as parts of the same creative process.
Samba de Proveta
Among all the works on the album, Samba de Proveta occupies a particularly special place. The title is a direct tribute to Nailor Azevedo, known as Proveta, whose music had an enormous influence on my musical development and became the subject of my undergraduate research on the language of the Brazilian big band.
The work, however, was never conceived as an attempt to reproduce his musical language. Instead, it emerged from questions that had been accompanying me during that period about the relationship between improvisation, formal development, Brazilian music, and contemporary writing for large ensembles.
When Proveta Recorded the Piece
Proveta’s contribution was recorded after Orquestra Urbana’s sessions, following the same process used for the other guest musicians featured on the album. With the big band tracks already recorded, we had the opportunity to listen to the piece together, talk about the composition, and discuss different possibilities for the improvisation before recording his solo.
At one point, he shared an image that I have never forgotten. As he listened to the piece, he imagined a narrative in which he himself was the main character, moving through a night in São Paulo. The opening suggested late afternoon and the beginning of the evening, an urban setting that was still relatively calm, carrying a sense of anticipation and quiet mystery.
From there, the energy begins to grow, like someone getting ready to leave home, meeting up with other musicians, taking part in the soundcheck, and watching the city gradually come alive. As the piece progresses, the activity increases, the music accelerates, and the events become more intense.
Until the moment when the performance finally begins. In Proveta’s interpretation, that large samba section represented people coming together, the performance itself, celebration, and the collective energy of a city fully alive at night.
Then, little by little, the music begins to dissolve. The musical material is gradually deconstructed, the momentum loses intensity, the textures become increasingly sparse, and the work returns to the more mysterious and contemplative atmosphere of the opening. To him, it was like the journey back home after everything was over.
His comment caught my attention because it described the work as a continuous narrative, something I had never consciously formulated that way while composing it. Proveta remarked that he recognized elements related to samba and choro, but that the way those materials were organized felt innovative to him.
The piece makes use of metric changes, irregular meters, and compositional procedures that are uncommon within those traditions, including passages in 5/8 and 7/8. Even so, in his view, those elements emerged naturally within the musical flow and, rather than interrupting the narrative, seemed fully integrated into the logic of the piece itself.
At another point in our conversation, Proveta observed that traditions remain alive precisely because they continue to be reinvented by different generations of musicians.
For someone who had studied his music for so many years, and whose work had played such an important role in my musical development, hearing those words was especially meaningful.
Febre
Febre was originally written as a work for jazz nonet during my final year at Unicamp. The piece was later expanded for big band. Its origins date back to a period when I was beginning to broaden my musical references and explore new approaches to composition.
Febre was originally written as a work for jazz nonet during my final year at Unicamp. The piece was later expanded for big band. Its origins date back to a period when I was beginning to broaden my musical references and explore new approaches to composition.
At that time, I was part of a group dedicated to exploring more contemporary jazz languages. Among the repertoire we performed were works by composer and trombonist Alan Ferber, whose music caught my attention in a particularly strong way.
What intrigued me was not only his writing for winds, but also the way multiple independent melodic lines coexisted simultaneously. There was an intense use of counterpoint, layers of information unfolding at the same time, and a sense of collective motion that felt quite different from what I had encountered in many earlier jazz traditions.
That approach to writing sparked my curiosity. I began wondering what would happen if I brought some of those ideas into my own musical world, and Febre grew directly out of that investigation.
Throughout the piece, different melodic lines intersect, accumulate, and compete for space. At certain moments, the amount of information seems to approach the limit of what we can consciously follow as listeners. That feeling of perceptual overload, almost like a feverish state in which multiple sensations unfold simultaneously, ultimately inspired the title of the work.
The title also serves as a play on Alan Ferber’s surname, whose music became the point of departure for this exploration.
Sob(re) Pedais
The title itself suggests a play on words. By removing the “re” in parentheses, two possible readings remain simultaneously in Portuguese: sob pedais (“under pedals”) and sobre pedais (“over pedals”). Both are integral to the logic of the piece.
Pedal points have always fascinated me because, depending on how they are used, they can simultaneously create sensations of stability and tension. They function as a point of reference that remains constant while everything else in the music changes. At the same time, when different harmonies, melodies, and textures accumulate over that same static center, very particular tensions begin to emerge.
The piece grew directly out of my curiosity to explore those possibilities. Much of the work was built by observing what happens when contrasting materials coexist over relatively stable structures for extended periods of time, making it one of my most direct explorations of pedal points and the tensions produced between stability and change.
Pelos Ares (Temporal)
The work that gives the album its title occupies a unique place within this story. Originally, it was intended to be only one movement of a larger suite called Pelos Ares, which was never completed. This movement, however, remained.
The subtitle, Temporal (“Storm”), offers an important clue to its origins. From the outset, the work was conceived around the image of a storm. It begins with the force of an initial lightning strike and then follows an unpredictable path, alternating abrupt changes of direction, moments of suspension, a brief calm, and new explosions of energy. Much of the writing was shaped by an attempt to translate that sense of constant instability into music.
Beyond its fast tempo, the work explores wide instrumental ranges, large intervallic leaps, and highly irregular individual lines whose logic depends on their interaction with the orchestra’s other voices. The soloists are also challenged to anticipate those irregularities and shape an organic musical discourse amid the intense flow of events, making this one of the most demanding pieces I have written for big band.
The title itself carried a double meaning. On one hand, it referred to the world of wind instruments and the air that defines a big band. On the other, it alluded to the Portuguese expression pelos ares, often used to describe something being thrown “into the air.”
When the time came to choose the album’s title, this composition carried several meanings that seemed to represent the project particularly well. In addition to marking my first prize in an international composition competition, Pelos Ares reflected the world of wind instruments that defines a big band while suggesting a repertoire in constant motion, unpredictable and always open to new transformations. It naturally became the title of the album.
The Guest Artists
One of the greatest joys of this project was the opportunity to bring together musicians who had influenced my journey in very different ways. Each guest carried a story of their own. In some cases, they were artists whose music I had admired for many years. In others, they were colleagues with whom I worked closely during my years of study in Miami. The album ultimately brought together people connected to different stages of my musical life and to different artistic worlds that helped shape this repertoire.
Brian Lynch was one of those encounters.
During my years at the University of Miami, I had the opportunity to know him closely both as a professor and as a musician. What impressed me most was the intensity of his improvisational language, his virtuosity, and the extraordinary expressive power he brings to the trumpet.
When the time came to choose the album’s guest artists, his participation on Pelos Ares (Temporal) felt like a natural choice. The piece demands precisely that kind of energy: a combination of technical control, imagination, and creative drive capable of engaging with the tension and movement that define the work.
John Daversa was also part of the musical environment that surrounded me during that period, although for very different reasons.
What always fascinated me was the uniqueness of his sound. There is something in the way he articulates the trumpet that approaches the quality of the human voice. His improvisational language rarely follows predictable paths and frequently ventures into less conventional territory.
In Casa do Lago, his contribution appears at different moments throughout the piece, alongside other improvisers who emerge along the way, almost like characters entering and leaving a musical narrative. In his first appearance, John improvises while the orchestra continues developing the musical material around him, allowing the solo to become part of the work’s ongoing transformation rather than an isolated episode.
Later, he returns in a completely different section of the piece. Over a continuous orchestral texture, the trumpets and trombones develop a chorale in free tempo, guided by the conductor rather than by a fixed pulse. This combination creates something like an instrumental mantra over which the soloists emerge once again. At that moment, John’s improvisation introduces harmonic tensions and unexpected shifts that further enrich the texture, bringing a very distinctive dimension to that passage.
Phil Doyle, in turn, was a colleague during my doctoral studies at the University of Miami and also a saxophonist with the Henry Mancini Institute.
Beyond his remarkable technical command of the instrument, Phil had a deep affinity for contemporary jazz and fusion. For that reason, he seemed like the ideal musician to participate in Quebra-Cabeças. Of all the works on the album, this is perhaps the one that comes closest to that hybrid musical world, combining elements of jazz, rock, and more experimental compositional approaches. His contribution added even greater strength and personality to that dimension of the piece.
André Mehmari’s presence on the album had a different kind of significance. When I began my university studies, André was already an established figure in Brazilian instrumental music. I had always admired the way he moves between popular music and concert music without either language seeming subordinate to the other. Years later, I even had the opportunity to interview him for my doctoral research on the relationships between these musical worlds.
In the piece on which he appears (Casa do Lago), there is a relatively open section intended for an improvised piano cadenza. I knew André would take the music to places I could not anticipate. Even so, I was surprised by the direction he chose.
His improvisation took on qualities that, at times, reminded me of a Mozartean piano fantasy. It was certainly not something I had imagined while composing the piece, but it ultimately added an unexpected dimension to the music and reinforced precisely the dialogue between the classical tradition, Brazilian music, and improvisation that I have always admired in his work.
Paulo Braga was another important reference within the world of Brazilian instrumental music. For many years, I had admired the energy of his piano playing, his creativity, and the highly personal way he combines elements of Brazilian music, jazz, and more contemporary harmonic languages.
His participation on the album represented an opportunity to work with a musician whose career I had followed for many years. Later, we would collaborate on other projects as well, but even at that point his presence helped strengthen the dialogue between this repertoire and the tradition of Brazilian instrumental music.
Proveta’s participation, already mentioned in the section on Samba de Proveta, carried a different symbolic weight. He was not simply a guest artist on the album, but one of the principal musical references behind the very questions that gave rise to the composition itself.
For that reason, his presence in the studio created a very tangible continuity between the research I had devoted to his music, the work dedicated to him, and the moment when I finally had the opportunity to hear him perform that piece.
That experience, which I describe in greater detail below, remains one of the most memorable stories from the recording of Pelos Ares.
The Story Behind Samba de Proveta
Among all the stories surrounding the recording of Pelos Ares, this is perhaps the one that remains most vividly in my memory.
Unlike the other compositions on the album, Samba de Proveta was written specifically for the recording. While the other works had already gone through rehearsals, performances, and successive revisions before entering the studio, this piece was composed during the weeks leading up to the recording sessions.
For that reason, it never had the opportunity to mature on stage. We rehearsed it only once or twice before recording, and those rehearsals were also the first occasions on which I heard the music outside my own imagination. They revealed countless details that led me to continue revising the writing until the very last moment.
During the weeks leading up to the recording, I rewrote passages, reorganized sections, altered musical material, and prepared new versions of the scores. I remember spending the night before the first recording session making final adjustments, printing, and assembling the revised parts.
When we arrived at the studio, many of those changes had still never been played by the musicians. The first time I heard that version of the piece was during the recording session itself, while watching the orchestra react to revisions that had been made only hours earlier.
That episode summarizes well the way I approached composition during that period. Even when a work already seemed finished, I continued revisiting the material, experimenting with new possibilities, and refining details until the very last moment.
The Recording
The recording of Pelos Ares took place during a particularly intense period of my life. At the time, I was living in Miami, dividing my time among my doctoral studies, my activities as a Composer Fellow at the Henry Mancini Institute, music direction projects, production work, and a variety of university responsibilities.
At the same time, I had a very clear desire to document that repertoire, and the summer break ultimately created the opportunity to make it happen. During that period, I returned to Brazil to organize the performances, rehearsals, preparations, and recording sessions.
The album, however, was not built only during those days in the studio. The compositions brought together in Pelos Ares had been written over many years, spanning different stages of my education and my development as a composer.
Later, with the creation of Orquestra Urbana in 2014, that process gained a new dimension. The rehearsals, the performances in São Paulo and Campinas, and the intensive preparation leading up to the recording allowed the arrangements to mature and helped consolidate the musical language the ensemble developed around this repertoire.
The recording sessions became the moment when that entire journey was finally documented. For that reason, I have always viewed the studio less as the album’s starting point than as the final stage of a process that had already been unfolding for a long time.
Mixing and Mastering
After the recording, another equally important stage began: post-production. Anyone who has participated in a recording project knows there is an enormous difference between finishing a recording session and listening to a completed album.
For weeks, the focus shifts to selecting takes, editing, balancing instruments, and making a long series of decisions that profoundly shape the listening experience.
I mixed the album myself. During that period, alongside my doctoral studies in composition, I was also pursuing intensive training in recording, music production, and audio engineering at the University of Miami, a field in which I received several DownBeat Awards during my years there. Because of that, mixing never represented merely a technical stage of the project. For me, it was part of the compositional process itself and of shaping the album’s sonic identity.
Although many of the artistic decisions during post-production were my responsibility, this work also benefited from the invaluable collaboration of the team at Estúdio Síncopa, especially Marcelo Cecchi and José Bichoff, who contributed to different technical aspects of the mixing process.
All of this happened alongside the final stage of my doctoral studies. While preparing my dissertation defense and completing the compositions that formed part of that work, I devoted much of my remaining time to finishing Pelos Ares.
It was an especially demanding period, but I never regarded post-production as a secondary stage. It was an essential part of how I imagined these works ultimately reaching the audience.
The mastering was done by Felipe Tichauer, a Brazilian mastering engineer based in Miami and a multiple Grammy Award winner, whom I met during my years in the United States. It was an especially meaningful collaboration for me, both because of my long-standing admiration for his work and because it gave me the opportunity to complete the album alongside someone who represented the level of excellence that characterized Miami’s recording industry.
I still remember the first time I listened to the finished masters. During the rehearsals, the recording sessions, and even the mixing process itself, my attention had been focused almost entirely on realizing a particular artistic vision. My mind remained occupied with details, adjustments, technical decisions, and everything that could still be improved. During such intense periods of work, there seemed to be little room simply to experience the music emotionally.
When I finally heard the mastered album on a playback system capable of revealing the full results of that process, something changed. For the first time, I was able to set aside my analytical mindset and simply listen to those works as music. I remember feeling deeply moved and getting goosebumps as I heard so many years of work finally transformed into a finished album.
What Pelos Ares Represents to Me Today
Many years have passed since the recording of Pelos Ares. During that time, Orquestra Urbana has continued to evolve, and my relationship with the album has changed as well.
When it was first released, I saw it primarily as a document of a collection of compositions. Today, I see it as a record of Orquestra Urbana’s early years and of a very specific stage in my artistic journey.
More than simply preserving these works, the album captures a moment when different compositional investigations, musical collaborations, and formative experiences converged into a single project. Looking back on it today, I still recognize many of the questions that continue to guide my writing.
Listen to the Album
Album Credits (2016)
Compositions, Artistic Direction, and Artistic Production
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Saxophones and Woodwinds
Ubaldo Versolato - Lead Alto Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Flute, and Clarinet
Cesar Roversi - Alto Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, and Clarinet
Gerson Galante - Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, and Clarinet
Raphael Ferreira - Tenor Saxophone and Flute
Samuel Pompeo - Baritone Saxophone and Bass Clarinet
Trumpets and Flugelhorns
João Lenhari (Lead on Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7)
Otavio Nestares
Nahor Gomes (Lead on Tracks 3 and 6)
Bruno Belasco
Trombones
Silvio Giannetti (Lead on all tracks except Track 1)
Fabio Oliva (Lead on Track 1)
Diego Calderoni
Jaziel Gomes (Bass Trombone)
Rhythm Section
Fabio Leandro - Piano and Rhodes (Tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7)
João Paulo Gonçalves - Electric Guitar and Acoustic Guitar (Track 4)
Rui Barossi - Double Bass (Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7) and Electric Bass (Tracks 3 and 7)
Rodrigo Marinônio - Drums
Guest Artists
Nailor Azevedo “Proveta” - Clarinet (Track 4)
Phil Doyle - Tenor Saxophone (Track 3)
Brian Lynch - Trumpet (Track 7)
John Daversa - Trumpet (Track 2)
André Mehmari - Piano (Track 2)
Paulo Braga - Piano (Track 6)
Fábio Augustinis - Percussion (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)
Fernando Saci - Cuíca (Track 4)
Recording
Recorded at Estúdio Sincopa in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, between July 27 and 30, 2015.
Recording Engineers
Marcelo Cecchi
Ricardo Domingues
José Bichoff
Additional Recording Sessions
Piano (all tracks except Casa do Lago), acoustic guitar, and clarinet solo on Samba de Proveta
Estúdio Arsis - São Paulo, Brazil
Recording Engineer: Adonias Souza Jr.
Piano on Casa do Lago
Estúdio Monteverdi - Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
Recording Engineer: André Mehmari
Trumpet solo on Pelos Ares (Temporal), trumpet on Casa do Lago, and tenor saxophone solo on Quebra-Cabeças
Frost School of Music, University of Miami
Recording Engineer: Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Production
Executive Producer
Clara Mancuso
Production Coordinator
Lucas Silveira
Executive Project Coordination
Lucas Silveira and Jonas Zilberleib
Concept
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima and João Lenhari
Mixing
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Mixing Assistants
Marcelo Cecchi
José Bichoff
Mastering
Felipe Tichauer (Red Traxx Music)
Drawings
Joaquim Caetano de Lima Filho
Photography
Lucas Silveira
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Suzana Barreto
Graphic Design
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Acknowledgments Published with the Album (2015)
The text below was originally published in the booklet of Pelos Ares.
When embracing a project of this magnitude, and in searching for technical excellence and aesthetic provocation, my vision teetered between madness and lucidity. Madness for swimming against the tide of the cultural market. Lucidity in the dedication to an artistic vision and its intent to move others.
I thank all the “crazy lucid” individuals who embraced this project called Orquestra Urbana with me; the great musicians who have given life to ideas on paper; and all the professionals who made this beautiful record possible. In addition to the names mentioned in the credits, I also thank those who have indirectly contributed to the fulfillment of this project: São Paulo State Department of Culture for its financial support, those responsible for the spaces where we performed and rehearsed, the substitute musicians of the orchestra, and everyone who supported us throughout this musical journey.
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
2015
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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