Sao Paolo-born guitarist Pedro Ramos started a choro group on a whim while in school. By the time he followed his wife to New York, he had become obsessed with the cavaquinho and choro. “I knew nobody played choro here,” remembers Ramos, a founder of the Choro Ensemble. “But it was clear to me that’s what I would do as soon as I got here.” Though he didn’t know anybody in New York, he gradually gathered enough musicians to have a weekly gig in Astoria, Queens, playing only for tips. He met Israeli-born jazz musician Anat Cohen when she first arrived in New York, and found out she had stumbled onto a few choros, which she had played on clarinet. One day Ramos invited Cohen to join them. She was already an established jazz sax player, but the challenge of learning this new style and incorporating improvisation captivated her.

“The music was so fascinating to me,” says Cohen. “It demanded a real technical study. The melodies are not as simple as the American songbook, or other common songs that you just hum. You have to really study them and understand the melodic structure before you improvise.” At the same time, Cohen—who had been playing tenor and soprano saxophone—was rekindling her love for her childhood instrument, the clarinet. The challenge of choro—whose mellow moods belie the hurried runs required to play it—drove her to get her clarinet chops back and as she dedicated herself to fluency and mastery of the style, she began incorporating her own voice, embellishments, and improvisation into it.

Cohen took a two-month trip to Rio de Janeiro where she met young people dedicated to playing this music, developing their own language in this music, “more like a jazz approach,” she explains. She fell in love with the music, the culture, and the people and she was hooked just like Ramos. Cohen is now fluent in Portuguese (to the point that she was negotiating mechanical rights for songs on the new album) and the dynamism between her melodic lead and the other band members launched an entirely new scene in New York.

The Choro Ensemble—rounded out by Gustavo Dantas on guitar, Carlos Almeida on seven-string guitar, and Zé Mauricio on pandeiro (a Brazilian tambourine) and other percussion—played a weekly gig at a Manhattan French bistro for five years straight. So energetic and popular was the regular engagement that Time Out New York named it one of the five Best Weekly Gigs in New York. Soon the group found themselves playing with Winton Marsalis at the Apollo Theater, with the New York Pops and Skitch Henderson at Carnegie Hall, and on their own at New York’s JVC Jazz Festival.

Choro Ensemble Around the Table – Photo by Christopher McLallen (jpeg)
Choro Ensemble Nosso Tempo – Cover (jpeg)