3 Minutes of Awesome! A Frenchman remembers Brazil...

One of my favorite musicians is Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), a Jewish composer from the Provence region of France. He is best-known for his use of avant garde harmonies, jazz rhythms and melodies, and folk music from his native land as well as other cultures. He spent time traveling in Brazil in the late 1910s, and the popular music of the cafes and dance halls left a strong impression on him, so much so that he wrote Saudades do Brasil, or Memories of Brazil, a suite of dances for piano.

I'm not sure how I first encountered this work, but I know it was in high school. I have always been captivated by the bitonality (left hand in one key and right hand in another), which creates some delightfully "crunchy" harmonies. In Milhaud's music, however, it always seems natural, as if we are in the middle of the street in Rio hearing sounds coming from two different night clubs.

In college, I arranged four of the twelve movements for band, with somewhat mixed results. I was fortunate enough to have them performed by the North Shore Concert Band at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall at Northwestern University. Some day I'll dust them off and see if they are worth looking at with a band at DHS.

Here is piano player Michael Kozlovsky's rendition of the first movement, "Sorocaba." You can follow along with the sheet music in the video.

Here is version on Spotify that I like even more:

I highly recommend listening to the entire suite, but that's way more than just three minutes of awesome!