Good performance, bad audio
gw | Lansing, NY United States | 02/14/2003
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Sergio returns to his roots (as in The Swinger from Rio) with this live concert date, apparently from 1988. Sadly, the recording sounds almost like a bootleg, complete with distortion from time to time. As you see from the song list, he's playing mostly from the Great American Songbook, with his usual jazz-bossa approach. (Sometimes it sounds like he's channeling Vince Guaraldi, which is not a bad thing.) He's accompanied by a strong rhythm section and two uncredited wind players, a reed/flute player and trombonist. I like this album, despite the poor audio and lousy liner notes. For instance, as you can guess, cut #11 is actually Nica's Dream (Horace Silver). As a bonus, the last cut is the original Brasil '66 version of Mas Que Nada and has no connection with the rest of the album."