My Collaboration with Romero Lubambo at Jazz at Lincoln Center: Arrangements, Music Direction, and a Live Album
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- 4 days ago
- 18 min read
Updated: 19 minutes ago
When I moved to New York in late 2016, I wanted to continue developing my work as a composer, arranger, and music director. I also intended to deepen an artistic inquiry that began with Brazilian music and improvisation and extended into writing for large ensembles and the dialogue between jazz and concert music.
New York attracted me not only because of its concentration of musicians, but also because of the institutions and venues that treated jazz as a living tradition. In those places, the preservation of its history coexisted with contemporary creation. They also welcomed instrumental projects connected to Brazilian music and other Latin American traditions.
Jazz at Lincoln Center occupied a central place in that vision. For years, I followed its programming from a distance and imagined developing projects that could engage with that space. What I did not yet know was which encounters and circumstances would make that possible.
Just over two years after the move, a collaboration with guitarist and composer Romero Lubambo would bring my work to Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The project would lead to four nights of performances and, later, to the album Live at Dizzy’s, released by Sunnyside Records.
Between our first meeting and the album’s release, however, there was a long journey. The idea had to take the form of a repertoire, new arrangements and orchestrations, and an ensemble capable of bringing them to life. Then came the rehearsals, eight performances at Dizzy’s Club, and the transformation of the live recordings into an album.
Behind these stages was an artistic question: how could I expand another composer’s music without erasing what made his language recognizable? This is the story of how we sought to answer that question and transform a musical affinity into a concrete project.
Meeting Romero Lubambo in New York
Some time after I arrived in New York, I went to a jazz club to hear several Brazilian musicians perform. I was there to listen to music, meet friends, and become better acquainted with a music scene I was beginning to join.
Romero Lubambo was among the people there. I knew his name as that of a Brazilian musician with an international profile, particularly because of his work in the United States, where he performed and recorded with prominent jazz and popular music artists.
When we met that evening, I was getting ready to perform. Before I could say anything, Romero looked at me and asked:
“Aren’t you Rafael Piccolotto?”
I was completely surprised.
Romero explained that he had heard a recording I made with Orquestra Urbana and Nailor Azevedo “Proveta.” For someone who had only recently arrived in New York, being recognized in that way by a Brazilian musician of such international stature was especially meaningful.
We spoke briefly about music, composition, arrangements, and projects. At one point, I mentioned that it would be a great pleasure to create something with him in the future. Romero was immediately receptive to the idea.
We exchanged contact information and continued talking after that meeting. Nothing concrete existed that night, but we both sensed an affinity between our work and the possibility that something might grow from it.
The Chamber Project and Romero’s Repertoire
By the time I met Romero, I had already created the Chamber Project in New York as a platform for bringing Brazilian music, improvisation, and writing for chamber ensembles into dialogue. It was not a fixed group. The instrumentation could change according to the needs of each creation.
That flexibility allowed me to work as a composer, arranger, and music director within the same process. It also made it possible to bring together musicians from jazz, Brazilian music, and concert music around repertoire for which a ready-made ensemble would have been difficult to find.
Romero brought a complementary perspective, shaped by decades of international experience and a highly personal musical language. In our conversations, he told me that he had long wanted to hear his compositions performed by an orchestra or a larger ensemble. The possibility of creating a project together with strings, winds, and a Brazilian rhythm section made him especially enthusiastic. The Chamber Project offered a flexible starting point for turning that longstanding desire into a concrete orchestral proposal.
The Possibility of Dizzy’s Club
As our conversations progressed, Romero mentioned the possibility of presenting the project at Dizzy’s Club, a Jazz at Lincoln Center venue where he already performed regularly. His relationship with the institution allowed him to bring the proposal to the programming team, while the Chamber Project provided the artistic structure needed to turn the idea into a concert.
Presenting an original project in that space held particular meaning for me. Since moving to New York, I had hoped to find opportunities to become part of that musical world and build relationships and collaborations with its leading institutions and venues. Being able to do so at Dizzy’s Club through a collaboration with Romero that brought Brazilian music and orchestral writing together made the prospect even more special.
Romero contacted Jazz at Lincoln Center and proposed a series devoted to his repertoire, featuring new arrangements for the orchestra. The remaining question was whether the institution would be interested in hosting a proposal that was only beginning to take shape.
A few weeks later, the confirmation arrived: the project would happen.
And it would not be a single performance. Jazz at Lincoln Center offered us four consecutive nights at Dizzy’s Club, with two sets each night, from January 17 through 20, 2019. The confirmation transformed an informal conversation into a concrete commitment. We would need to build a complete program, prepare the musicians, and sustain eight performances over four days.
Months of Writing and Preparation
The visible part of a concert lasts a few hours. The invisible part can take many months.
With the performances confirmed, I began immersing myself in Romero’s repertoire. We chose the music together, although many of the initial suggestions came from him. My task was to understand what made each composition recognizable and imagine what the new ensemble could reveal without imposing a language that did not belong to the repertoire.
I wrote all the arrangements and orchestrations for the project. Each piece required decisions about form, texture, balance, density, the distribution of solos, and space for improvisation. The goal was not simply to increase the number of musicians onstage. The presence of strings and winds would only make sense if they created new relationships around the guitar and rhythm section.
There was also a specific challenge in the relationship between the repertoire and the instruments. Many of Romero’s compositions use fast melodies, syncopations, and anticipations connected to Brazilian music. These elements are natural to musicians accustomed to samba and Brazilian instrumental music, but they do not necessarily correspond to the articulations most commonly found in the string quartet tradition.
This meant that not every line that worked well on guitar, in the winds, or in the rhythm section could simply be transferred to the violins, viola, and cello. I needed to write parts that preserved the rhythmic character of the music while remaining idiomatic and playable. At times, the strings could take part in the syncopated figures. Elsewhere, they contributed more effectively through long lines, counterpoint, harmonic layers, or changes in texture.
These decisions did not happen in isolation. Expanding the ensemble increased the possibilities for arranging and orchestration, allowing me to explore new instrumental combinations, textures, and relationships among the orchestra’s different parts. The challenge was to observe what the character of each composition allowed me to add and to create space for these new musical moments to exist cohesively within the work. In some cases, this involved writing new passages or allowing the music to take on a temporarily different character, creating interest and contrast without losing its identity.
In the live performances I attended and the recordings I heard, Romero generally organized his music according to a form commonly found in jazz: an introduction, the statement of the theme, open solos over repetitions of the form, the return of the theme, and an ending. This organization was not necessarily intrinsic to the compositions, but reflected the way he conceived and presented them. Rather than beginning with a fully notated arrangement for every instrument, Romero worked from a lead sheet that provided the theme and harmonic structure while preserving broad freedom for interaction among the musicians and for the development of improvisation.
As an arranger, I tended to shape form more progressively, returning to and transforming materials to create distinct moments over the course of each piece. The new arrangements grew from a balance between these two approaches. They preserved the openness and flexibility characteristic of Romero’s performances while using the resources of the new ensemble to build a more articulated trajectory within each composition.
A Chamber Jazz Orchestra
I proposed an instrumentation that I had been developing with the Chamber Project during that period. It combined a string quartet, four wind players, and a Brazilian rhythm section with guitar, accordion, piano, electric bass, and drums. Part of the repertoire would also feature vocalist Pamela Driggs, at Romero’s suggestion. The intention was to preserve the agility of a chamber ensemble while creating a palette of timbres broad enough to explore different aspects of the compositions.
Romero played an important role in assembling the rhythm section. Some of the musicians had worked with me before, while others joined the project at his suggestion. I brought together the string and wind players, many of whom already knew my work and the way I wrote. The names, instruments, and doubles appear in the technical credits at the end of the article.
This combination was essential to the result. I did not think of the ensemble’s different parts in terms of exclusive functions, since all the instruments could assume melodic, harmonic, or contrapuntal roles. What primarily distinguished each area was its timbral identity, its mode of articulation, and the way it produced and sustained sound.
Bowed string instruments made it possible to sustain notes continuously and explore a sonority that could be veiled, delicate, and deeply expressive. The winds added the character of breath, with phrasing shaped by airflow and agile articulations that engaged idiomatically with the syncopations and inflections of Brazilian music.
In the rhythm section, the electric bass provided support while the drums served as the engine of the subdivisions and groove. The guitar and piano, with their more defined attacks, could alternate among accompaniment, rhythmic interaction, and soloistic functions. The accordion occupied a particular position. Its bellows connected it to the breath of the winds, its ability to sustain sound allowed it to form relationships with the strings, and its harmonic and rhythmic flexibility helped integrate it with the piano and the other rhythm section instruments.
Rather than treating the strings, winds, and rhythm section as three separate blocks, I sought to explore these differences so that their timbres, articulations, and musical functions could respond to one another.
The ensemble also had an inherently delicate balance. A single violin does not produce the same intensity as a trumpet in its middle or upper register. The same contrast appears in the relationship between strings, saxophones, and drums. For that reason, balance could not depend solely on the dynamic markings in the score.
Miking the ensemble according to the practices of popular music helped bring these different levels of acoustic power closer together. The guitar used a pickup, and the strings were also miked. Even so, amplification could not replace orchestration. I needed to create moments in which the strings could emerge with greater independence, reduce the density of the winds or rhythm section, and prevent more powerful instruments from obscuring details of articulation and timbre.
Thinking about this balance was part of the arranger’s work. It was not enough to ask whether a particular line was possible on an instrument. I also had to consider whether it would be heard, whether it corresponded to the instrument’s natural mode of response, and whether it contributed to the character of the music.
The project had begun as an extension of the Chamber Project. In Jazz at Lincoln Center’s publicity, it was called the Rafael Piccolotto de Lima Chamber Orchestra Project. The Chamber Orchestra designation helped identify the ensemble created for those performances, while the Chamber Project name preserved the origin and flexibility of the artistic platform.
A Repertoire Drawn from Different Musical Histories
The program included six compositions by Romero, works by Débora Gurgel, Bobby Troup, and João Bosco, and one piece of my own. This diversity meant that the arrangements began from very different histories and needs. A complete list of tracks and composers appears in the technical credits at the end of the article.
My composition “Samba de Proveta” also became part of the project. I had written it in honor of Nailor Azevedo “Proveta” and recorded its original big band version with Orquestra Urbana in 2015. That was the recording Romero had heard before we met. Including the piece created a direct connection between the work that first drew his attention and the collaboration we were now developing together.
“Samba de Proveta” helps illustrate one of the transformations made through the arrangements. In its original version, the work used the full sections of a big band, with block chords, different voicing structures, and the sonic mass characteristic of that instrumentation. With only four strings and four winds, it would not have been possible to reduce those parts mechanically and expect the same result.
The new arrangement took on a more intimate character. Many lines had to be adapted, and the harmonic blocks were revised and redistributed so that they would work with fewer instruments. Rather than trying to reproduce a big band on a smaller scale, the arrangement began to explore the transparency and intimacy offered by the chamber ensemble.
With “Paquito in Bremen,” the path was almost the opposite. Romero usually performed the composition with small groups from a lead sheet, so there was much more space to fill. The arrangement created new lines, accompaniments, counterpoint, and harmonic layers for the string quartet and winds, allowing a piece with an originally open structure to take on an orchestral dimension.
These two examples show why expanding, reducing, and otherwise altering an ensemble are not merely quantitative operations. In “Samba de Proveta,” I needed to remove density and reconstruct relationships that had previously depended on full sections. In “Paquito in Bremen,” I had to create materials that did not exist in the version performed from the lead sheet. In both cases, the question remained the same: how could I change the scale without changing the music’s identity?
Some pieces naturally offered more space for sustained lines, counterpoint, and harmonic layers, as in “Samba de Proveta,” “By the Stream,” and “Paquito in Bremen.” Others required a different path. The speed of the melodies, syncopations, and rhythmic energy of pieces such as “Lukinha” and “Frevo Camarada” left less room for a lyrical use of the strings.
In these faster pieces, the challenge was to find functions that were musically relevant and idiomatic to the instruments. The goal was neither to force the strings to imitate the rhythm section continuously nor to neutralize the character of the compositions in order to accommodate them. It was to create alternation among intensities, registers, and textures, using the distinctive qualities of each instrument without losing the rhythmic momentum of the repertoire.
Four Nights at Jazz at Lincoln Center
After several days of rehearsal, we arrived at Dizzy’s Club for the first of four nights. Until then, I had spent months listening to the repertoire, writing, revising scores, and organizing the musicians. Onstage, all those decisions had to become music in front of an audience.
The eight performances allowed the project to develop in a way that a single concert rarely could. With each set, the musicians deepened their relationship with the arrangements, the solos found new paths, and the orchestra responded more naturally to Romero’s playing.
For me, the special meaning of those performances lay in making different dimensions of my work respond to one another before an audience. The orchestral writing needed to preserve space for improvisation, the music direction needed to organize the ensemble without constraining spontaneity, and the collaboration with Romero needed to remain at the center of everything.
The project also made visible a continuity between my earlier path and the work I was beginning to build in New York.
An Unexpected Audience
Some of the most memorable moments from those days came from the people in the audience.
Paquito D’Rivera was among them. One of the works in the repertoire was “Paquito in Bremen,” a composition Romero had written in his honor and that had received a new arrangement for the project. After one of the performances, Paquito came backstage to speak with us.
With the humor that has accompanied him for decades, he joked with Romero, asking where he had been hiding those new talents all that time. He was referring especially to me and Brazilian saxophonist Lívio Almeida. The remark was made in jest, but it remains a fond memory of the series.
Another curious encounter took place at the end of one of the performances. Someone approached me to talk about the integration of improvisation and written material, the project, and my approach to conducting.
He said that he worked primarily in the world of concert music and had been interested in observing a relaxed, informal way of conducting that was full of energy and groove. It was an approach different from the one normally associated with symphonic repertoire, but necessary for leading an ensemble in which the precision of the written material coexisted with the freedom of the improvisers and rhythm section.
The conversation ended cordially, but I left with the feeling that I recognized his face from somewhere. Later, I realized why. It was Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a conductor whose career I had followed for years through recordings and concert videos.
From the Concerts to the Album Live at Dizzy’s
The concerts on January 19 and 20 were recorded. The material selected for the album came from the two sets performed on January 20, the final night of the series. Transforming those performances into a record required a new stage of decisions.
Romero and I shared the project’s artistic production from its conception through its completion. After the concerts, we worked together to select the takes and oversaw the editing, mixing, and mastering. The recording and post-production team is identified in the technical credits at the end of the article.
Romero handled the contact with Sunnyside Records and much of the executive decision-making related to the label, with which he already had an established relationship. The album Romero Lubambo & Rafael Piccolotto Chamber Orchestra: Live at Dizzy’s was released on November 5, 2021, almost three years after the performances.
Wynton Marsalis’s Words
Wynton Marsalis attended one of the nights in the series. After the performance, he came backstage to greet Romero and speak with the musicians. At the time, I did not imagine that his connection to the project would have another development.
Months later, Wynton wrote the album’s liner notes. His words highlighted not only Romero’s musicianship, but also my contribution as a composer and orchestrator and the work of the Chamber Jazz Orchestra.
Wynton wrote that I had expanded the repertoire with insightful, effective, and carefully constructed orchestrations. He also described the recording as innovative and sophisticated, stating that each new listening revealed something “new and inspiring.” In closing, he described the collaboration as the meeting of “two masters in full flight.”
Receiving those words held special meaning because of who had written them. As co-founder and Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton played a decisive role in creating and consolidating the institution and became one of the most influential figures in contemporary jazz.
What the Project Represented
The project with Romero continued a way of working that I had been developing for more than a decade. As an arranger and music director, my role was to understand the identity of the artist with whom I was collaborating and build around it a form of writing capable of expanding the repertoire without changing its character. In that sense, Live at Dizzy’s did not represent the discovery of a new method, but the realization of this work in a context that was new to me.
Preserving a collaborator’s identity does not mean leaving the music untouched. In certain contexts, respect for the material lies precisely in the ability to recognize its central elements and transform them without removing its identity. Sometimes this means adding lines, harmonies, and new formal possibilities. In other situations, it means reducing density, leaving space, and resisting the temptation to use every available resource.
For me, good orchestration is not measured by the number of resources used, but by the ability to explore the entire field between its extremes, from a single instrument to an orchestral tutti and through all the intermediate combinations. In this project, controlling those possibilities allowed me to create contrasts, renew interest over the course of the pieces, and give the orchestral writing a presence proportionate to the needs of each composition.
What was new was the context in which this work took place. When I moved to New York, I did not yet know how I would build relationships with institutions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center or how my work would reach their stages. The collaboration with Romero provided a concrete answer. Performing for four nights at Dizzy’s Club alongside an artist of his stature, bringing an orchestral project built around Brazilian music to the stage, and transforming those performances into an album released by Sunnyside Records marked an unprecedented and especially significant step in building my career in New York.
Videos from the Performances
The following videos were recorded on January 20, 2019, during the series of performances by Romero Lubambo and the Chamber Orchestra at Dizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center. They document the performances selected for the album Live at Dizzy’s.
Bonus: A Recording from Another Set
In addition to the performances selected for the album, other moments from the series were also recorded. The video below was filmed during one of the sets performed on the day before the performances that became Live at Dizzy’s.
Project Media and Materials
The main narrative ends here. Below, I have gathered recordings, images, external sources, and technical information documenting the concerts, the production process, and the release of Live at Dizzy’s.
Front and back covers of the album:
Wynton Marsalis’s liner notes:
“Romero is a musician of exquisite taste. He possesses the other-worldly command of subtleties and nuances that can only be coaxed from the hands of a master, yet in his playing of even the tenderest melody we feel the unrelenting toughness of a true believer. He believes in world class virtuosity put to the service of artistic meaning, he believes in confronting the troubles of life with lyric sweetness, and he believes in the transcendent power of collective expression. He is one of the most beloved musicians by fellow artists all over the world because he makes everyone playing with him sound much better. You feel clean after playing with him, it’s like taking a long beautiful bath in the river of soul.
Composer Rafael Piccolotto has expanded our canon with insightful, effective, and superbly crafted orchestrations. He and his Chamber Jazz Orchestra have delivered us something to enjoy over and over again. At each listening, you hear something new and inspiring. This recording is innovative, sophisticated, and filled with the rare optimism of two masters in full flight. Romero, Rafael and the ensemble have set the table for us, let’s enjoy the meal.”
Wynton Marsalis
Live at Dizzy’s Technical Information and Credits
Album title: Romero Lubambo & Rafael Piccolotto Chamber Orchestra: Live at Dizzy’s
Venue: Dizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York
Concert dates: January 17 through 20, 2019
Performances: Two sets per night, for a total of eight performances
Recording: Concerts held on January 19 and 20, 2019, with performances from January 20 selected for the album
Release date: November 5, 2021
Record label: Sunnyside Records / Sunnyside Communications
Catalog number: SSC 1630
Approximate duration: 59 minutes
Arrangements, orchestrations, and conducting: Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Artistic production: Romero Lubambo and Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
Recording engineer: Rob Macomber
Recording studio: Studios at Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York
Mixing and mastering engineer: Dave Darlington
Mixing and mastering studio: Bass Hit Recording, New York
Graphic design: Christopher Drukker
Musicians:
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima: Arranger and conductor
Romero Lubambo: Acoustic and electric guitars
Vitor Gonçalves: Accordion
Hélio Alves: Piano
Itaiguara Brandão: Electric bass
Mauricio Zottarelli: Drums
Hadar Noiberg: Flute and piccolo
Alejandro Aviles: Alto saxophone, flute, and alto flute
Lívio Almeida: Tenor saxophone and clarinet
Stuart Mack: Trumpet and flugelhorn
Patti Kilroy: Violin I
Delaney Stockli: Violin II
Amanda Díaz: Viola
Eric Allen: Cello
Pamela Driggs: Vocals
Tracks and Composers:
1. Lukinha: by Romero Lubambo, 5:58
2. Bachião: by Romero Lubambo, 7:05
3. Pro Romero: by Débora Gurgel, 7:03
4. By the Stream: by Romero Lubambo, 6:11
5. Frevo Camarada: by Romero Lubambo, 3:57
6. Samba de Proveta: by Rafael Piccolotto de Lima, 9:06
7. Route 66: by Bobby Troup, 5:41
8. Paquito in Bremen: by Romero Lubambo, 4:47
9. Prêt-à-Porter de Tafetá: by João Bosco, 6:16
10. Pro Flavio: by Romero Lubambo, 2:56
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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