Album ‘Encounter’ by Amália with Don Byas available on Friday

The album ‘Encounter’, recorded 50 years ago by Amália Rodrigues and the tenor saxophonist Don Byas, is edited, remastered, on Friday, the coordinator of the full-fledged edition of the fado singer told Frederico Santiago.

“The album, which Amalia referred to as one of her best albums, was recorded 50 years ago, and has long been sold out on the market,” he said.

“‘Encounter’ emerged following the sessions of [album] ‘Fados’67’ and sessions with the set of guitars of Raul Nery,” said Frederico Santiago.

Referring to ‘Encounter’, Frederick Santiago stressed that “this was one of the first fusion albums of different songs.”

“The big star there, of course, is Amália, even because Don Byas, intelligent as he was, realized that his place, that is, the way he would make it more accurate, was to be a fifth follower because many of those songs met them that afternoon in recordings. But there are some Don Byas soils that sound beautiful, “he added.

In this recording “Amália is singing like a few times, maybe she wanted to impress Don Byas, who was a musician from another area [jazz], and still gave herself more than normal,” said Santiago.

The album was recorded in an afternoon, in the studios of Valentim de Carvalho in Paço de Arcos, by Hugo Ribeiro, and besides Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999) and Don Byas (1912-1972) the musicians Raul Nery and Fontes Rocha participated in the Portuguese guitar, Júlio Gomes, in the viola, and Joel Pina, in the bass guitar.

The remastering was done by Nelson Carvalho, counting this edition with a text by Luiz Villas-Boas, which appeared in the original edition in LP, and also texts by Frederico Santiago, and contextualization by João Moreira dos Santos.

Moreira dos Santos tells the indecision of the fadista in editing the disc, because it includes saxophone, having weighed the opinion of the guitarists who said: “Ah, Amália, it is a crime not to let this album be edited. criticism, one more thing … Do not mind, it’s so well sung. You never sing better than this, than this that sang here. ”

Amália, meanwhile, said years later, “And then it came out and it really is one of the great records I have.”

According to Moreira dos Santos, “the commercialization of the album came to give Amalia reason because despite being, admittedly, one of his favourites and having been received favourably by the press, seems to have pleased neither the Greeks nor the Trojans. In fact, if fado fans did not fully understand Don Byas’ participation, the jazz amateurs lamented the lack of time the saxophonist had to rehearse. ”

For this year, Frederico Santiago plans to publish the album ‘Com Que Voz’, recorded 50 years ago, which will include ‘new things that have been found, however’, namely the unpublished ‘I went to the Source Lavar a Cabelos’, poem by the troubadour João Soares Coelho, adapted by Natalia Correia and music by Alain Oulman, as well as the complete versions ‘Of the Tower Higher’ and ‘Almond Bitter’, by José Ary dos Santos and Oulman.

In the pipeline, with no dates yet confirmed, is the triple CD ‘Amália in Paris’, which will bring together several recordings unreleased live from the fado singer to French radio, as well as two concerts at Olympia in 1967 and 1975, the reissue of the album’ Amália / Vinicius’, the edition of the integral show that gave rise to the LP ‘Amália no Canecão’, in Rio de Janeiro, and a new edition of the album ‘Cantigas Numa Língua Antiga’, added Frederico Santiago.

He was expected to complete the discography in 2020, when one hundred years after the birth of Amália Rodrigues, but at the moment believes that the calendar of publications should be in the middle of next year.

“When we started in 2014, it was foreseen [to end in 2020], but there were so many things that we did not expect, that I think maybe it’s not going to be everything, but at least we’re going to be in the middle of a full edition, and with the certainty that it will happen, ” he said.

“The structuring of the edition of the integral is done, there is this certainty, and if it is not in 2020, it will be in 2022, that we will finish“, he added, noting that the reissues of the recordings of the fado singer and edition of unpublished have “corrected many errors, some even for sympathy, whether of authorship or of companions. ”

The album consists of 12 themes: ‘People that Wash in Rio’, ‘Solitude’, ‘Strange Way of Life’, ‘Liberation’, ‘Tiredness’,’ Chapel Street ‘,’ Ai Mouraria ‘,’ Ser Pobre ‘,’ Coimbra ‘,’ Old Lisbon ‘,’ There is Festa na Mouraria ‘and’ Curse ‘.