Only - 2020

Whether as a performer or composer, Adriana Calcanhotto keeps the flame of invention burning, which makes her always look for new challenges, partners and creative methods. Having known and admired her for a long time, I enthusiastically received the call to produce an entire album of hers, composed during the period of social isolation imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. It seemed like an impossible mission, but great artists really like the impossible.

 

It all started with the track "I saw you sambar". I received the recordingdemo by Adriana and I imagined a funky samba, with bass, drums and brass. Because I know you like Mark Ronson and Anderson Paak, I invited my most recent musical partners, STRR and Leonardo Chaves, to create the arrangement. The track was enthusiastically received by the singer and Andrea Franco, her manager and executive producer of the project. So, they started sending me more songs, resulting from a challenge that Adriana set herself during isolation, to compose a song a day, until lunchtime.

 

Even though she knew exactly what she wanted, Adriana didn't close any of the doors that I proposed to open in each song. I tried to highlight the most interesting aspects of his authorial work, which in this album shines and continues with inspiration and personality, according to the surgical definition of Antonio Cicero and Waly Salomão inrelease from the album "Cantada" (2002). The duo of poets "hot plate" recognizes and praises in Adriana "the will and ability to keep the experimental vein alive not on the alternative edges, but, precisely, on themainstream of commercial pop music". 

 

So, with Adriana's unreleased material in hand, I proposed that we form a creative nucleus with STRR and Leonardo, who would not only act as instrumentalists, but also as sound engineers. As the entire album was made without anyone meeting in person, I needed allies with knowledge and interest in technology, to guarantee technical quality in the administration of audio files that arrived from different regions of Brazil.

 

STRR (pronounced “Star”) is the pseudonym of electronic music composer and producer Mateus Estrela. Born in Belém do Pará, like me, he has somesingles released and an EP of electronic music, called "Low Profile" (2019). Leonardo Chaves, our fellow countryman, is a bassist and is part of the band Joana Marte. Both were decisive in the entire process and, therefore, signed on to co-produce the album.

 

From the central nucleus that I formed with STRR and Leo, many musicians and friends contributed to the project. Some of them have been my partners for a long time, like Allen Alencar (guitar) and Zé Manoel (piano). However, with most of the guests, including Diogo Gomes (winds), Bruno di Lullo (guitar), Rafael Rocha (percussion), Thomas Harres (drums and percussion) and Chibatinha (guitar), I had the pleasure of working for first time now. It's hard to believe that we managed to bring together, despite the loneliness, this multitude of talents. In one of our calls, by the way, I joked with Adriana that I could sing like this: "I walk around the house driving people talking on the phone." 

 

My relationship with Adriana Calcanhotto is not new. We met before I even recorded my first album, around 2008. At that point, I was already corresponding with Antonio Cicero, our musical partner and mutual friend, who was a great supporter of my artistic career. Cicero made the bridge so that I could meet her in Belém, the day after the performance of the show "Maré". Since then, we have maintained a loving relationship at a distance, which became closer when I reread some of his songs for the album "Presente", which I recorded to celebrate Cicero's 70th birthday, and when I was invited, later, to perform "Cantada ( After having you)" in the project "Nada Ficau No Lugar" (2019), in which several artists revisit their original repertoire.

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Without being tied to a genre or a specific sound, "Só" is not an album closed in itself. Adriana's loneliness, in this case, mirrors the loneliness of all of us, "huddled together and alone" in our private prisons. It is known that, in this period of global crisis, we artists are especially threatened. Still, as Graciliano Ramos says in "Memórias do Cárcere", "within the narrow limits to which grammar and the law force us, we can still move". 

 

Arthur Nogueira
Music producer of the album "Só"

May/2020