Milton Nascimento no Carnegie Hall
A Brazilian High Priest Looks Back
The great Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento was a third of the way through his concert at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night before he addressed the audience, from within a cloud of reminiscence.
“Twenty-five years ago I started my career as a performer in the United States here,” he said in English, indicating the Carnegie stage. He recalled seeing a poster on the outside of the building, with his image alongside that of a coming attraction, Frank Sinatra. Marveling anew at that pinch-me moment, Mr. Nascimento said he was honored to be back again.
That memory was probably the jolt he needed: his first five songs, stretching back to the early 1970s, had felt wan and indistinct, plagued by uncertain sound and unsteady vigor. Mr. Nascimento could hardly be heard during “Tema dos Deuses,” a faintly foreboding processional. He turned his back during the whistled refrain of “Bola de Meia, Bola de Gude,” an effervescent samba, delegating most of the whistling to his sidemen; the song’s talky, syncopated verses left him nearly out of breath. And “Caçador de Mim,” a ballad of pained self-reflection, suffered from an acute case of synthesizer bloat.
It might seem that a nod to past triumphs — to a time when Mr. Nascimento was in limpid voice and catlike creative form, an intrepid and sympathetic troubadour, the high priest and pied piper of the wordless vocal — would be a bad idea. Last year he released a respectable but pro forma repertory album, “Novas Bossas,” on Blue Note. His finest work this decade has been “Pietá,” released in the United States in 2005 on Savoy Jazz, and, at its best, redolent of increasingly distant achievements. As in the case of late-period Sinatra, Mr. Nascimento has been making his way forward with a faded glory.
But that’s still at least a kind of glory, as Mr. Nascimento illustrated at choice moments in the show. “Encontros e Despedidas,” one of the many songs he wrote with the composer Fernando Brant, followed a drift of ascending and descending melody, and he sang it with sensitivity and purpose.
Not long afterward he offered a slow, sparse take on “Ponta de Areia,” singing in an unscoured and glowing falsetto, still the magical part of his range. Then came a segue to another ballad, “Coração de Estudante,” which he imbued with equal presence, drawing out the final word — “fé,” meaning faith — on a high, pure note that seemed to flourish outside of any human effort.
Throughout the concert Mr. Nascimento received earnest support from his band: the pianist Kiko Continentino, the lead guitarist Wilson Lopes, the bassist Gastão Villeroy and the drummer Lincoln Cheib. Their sound was often slick, suggesting funk-fusion or airless pop or, in the case of “Para Lennon e McCartney,” unreconstructed disco. (Things improved whenever Mr. Nascimento was strumming an acoustic guitar, though he was always buried in the mix.)
The customary encore was “Maria, Maria,” an upbeat shuffle with a full-chested singalong. But it could only be an anticlimax after the closer, “A Lua Girou,” a hypnotic ballad derived from a folk melody. At one point Mr. Nascimento had the audience moaning a spooky background figure as he soared above with his falsetto and his guitar: one special voice among the many, even now.
via NYTimes.com