Delia Fischer: Beyond Bossa

4-STARS An intriguingly multi-layered project, Beyond Bossa has unfolded over a number of years. The "beyond" in the title points in a few directions. A pianist, composer-arranger, singer (and dancer), Delia Fischer works across idioms: bossa nova, jazz, música popular brasileira (MPB), various types of Brazilian music, theater. Her recordings have earned her Latin Grammy nominations for Best Brazilian Album (MPB) in 2021 (H.O.J.E., Labidad Produções) and 2019 (Tempo Minimo, Labidad Produções), among other accolades. Further extending the boundaries, she called upon a far-flung mix of colleagues and friends to contribute to Beyond Bossa, including—among distinguished others—Matias Correa, Márcio Nucci, Gretchen Parlato, Eugene Friesen and Strings of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. And Beyond Bossa is the first of Fischer's albums to offer English lyrics, written by jazz journalist Allen Morrison, with a majority of the tune selections translated/adapted from Tempo Minimo. There is a fascinating synergy between Beyond Bossa and its counterpart, her 2019 release, with each production informing the other, enhancing the whole.

Morrison and Fischer worked in tandem on the compositions, but because neither is fluent in the other's language, Fischer's manager Andre Oliveira, who speaks both English and Portuguese, acted as their interpreter. Morrison describes their process this way: "Andre would send me a rough line-by-line translation of the lyrics into English. Then Delia, Andre, and I would discuss the song's theme. They never expected me to 'translate' the lyrics; rather, they gave me carte blanche to rewrite them in my own way. Sometimes I would follow the general storyline of the original song, and sometimes I would make up a new story on the song's general theme."

One sweet fruit of these collaborations is "The Lemon Jugglers of Rio." It features New York Voices in a vocal arrangement by Darmon Meader, created and offered from afar. Morrisson's lyric is an imaginative retelling of "Corações Amarelos," Camila Costa's text, which can be heard on Tempo Minimo, a tale of children who perform daily for pennies at a stop light and drivers who greet them with rolled-up windows (and "fechado corações"). Morrison's narrator pleads for the motorist to "have a heart and give to the lemon jugglers of Rio if you are a real patron of the arts." The orchestration is delicate, with the sweet timbres of flutes, bells and vocal percussion grounded by bass clarinet and bass; the overall sound is similar to what one hears on Tempo Minimo. Morrison's lyric accentuates Fischer's descending melody ("tumbling down the mountain every morning"), while Meader's canonic counterlines evoke a tossed ball ("practicing their juggling at the intersection when the light turns red"). The English is not a translation of Costa's Portuguese, but the esential story is retained, with the sensual experience, its color and aroma. Briefly, at the end, the Portuguese and English entwine.

"Almost Paradise" is another haunting lyric, with verses exquisitely sung in alternation by Fischer and Luciana Souza in a quasi-translation that captures the feeling of Fischer's original words ("Feliz por um Triz"). Voices and languages ultimately combine to close, pausing dramatically—dissonantly—on the final word of the phrase "a alma cala" (the soul falls silent), before seeming to evaporate (quietly ascending melodically), transmogrifying into song ("torna se canção").

"The Street Where I Was Born" (originally "Mesmos Sons") is a third bittersweet offering with an English adaptation that ably reflects the original, but as a sort of variation. Fischer is, among other things, a colorist as a composer-arranger, and Rodrigo Campello's richly resonant 12-string Brazilian folk guitar, which courses through the arrangement, is a perfect timbral match for a text that speaks of returning to a place where the cobblestones contain the DNA of children who played there, that still remember their first steps. Similarly, "Acupuncture Song" ("Ela Furou" in the original Portuguese, lyric by Camila Costa), a funky number with a narrative in which the protagonist is ghosted by her acupuncturist lover, sets Chico Pinheiro's jazzy electric guitar lines against the distinctively Brazilian timbral and rhythmic backdrop of Pretinho da Serrinha's cavaquinho and Campello's seven-string acoustic guitar.

Landing more firmly on the bitter side, "Marketplace" describes the "barren landscape of online dating apps," as Morrison put it, which "commodify people according to the most superficial aspects of their bodies and desires." Morrison tried to "add a bit more story" to his English version of Thiago Picchi's Portuguese lyric ("Mercado"), with Italian singer Mario Biondi—whose voice is filled with earth and gravel—pointing to an "old photograph" of "someone who looks like he is twenty," who "mainly arouses my suspicion." "Workaholic" is a remake of Marcos Valle's "Garra" (EMI, 1971; lyric by Paulo Sergio Valle). In either language, the song tells of the panting drive of a striver who works to "get ahead, if I don't drop dead" ("eu vou vencer, se eu não morrer"), while "things like love and art" fly past. On Beyond Bossa, Valle brings the song to life once again.

"My Voice In Your Head" takes the ultimate spot in the program (YouTube, below). Fischer wrote the piece ("Orgia") in response to Spike Jonze's Her (Annapurna Pictures, 2013), a film that deals with an intimate relationship between a man and his AI assistant. In a 2020 interview (YouTube), Fischer expressed the view that the situation is more common that we might imagine, that such things develop with apps in the virtual social world and between loved ones who are far away from one another, inspiring an unwholesome melancholy. Morrison's adumbrative lyric apprehends the open-ended strangeness of the situation ("in the curvature of time I can never come back, because now I'm someone else and not who I was").