Sound or chops? Art Farmer or Woody Shaw? Ben Webster or John Coltrane? Artie Shaw or Buddy DeFranco? This is the question every musician must ask himself. As evidenced on the his last two releases on Resonance Records (“Brazilliance x4” and “Simpatico”), Claudio Roditi, while displaying impressive technique on his trumpet and flugelhorn, has consciously decided to emphasize the elusive warmth that is so elusive on the brass instrument.
Roditi, who presently calls New Jersey his home, recalls the journey from his childhood in Brazil that brought him to search for his personal sound. He remembers, “I got involved with jazz because I asked my father to buy me any record that had a trumpet on the cover, when I started playing the horn as a kid. Consequently, some of these albums that were issued in Brazil were by Louis Armstrong, Harry James, so I heard this as just “music.” I didn’t know anything about jazz. Then, two relatives of mine were very important in my getting interested in it. One of them was an American man who married my aunt Cida; his name was Harold Taxman. They met in Brazil during WWII, got married, and I went to spend some holidays with them. He was listening to music all of the time, and I got very curious, so I started to ask him questions. He had some really good stuff; big band albums by Stan Kenton, the Charlie Parker Dial sessions with Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. One album that he had that was very influential was Stan Kenton Presents Frank Rosolino, with Sam Noto on trumpet. I really liked what I heard, so I started to get very interested in jazz.”
He laughingly recalls one of his first exposures to playing with other musicians, “Then, my family moved from Rio to Santos, a coastal city. We had a cousin of my father’s called Moises Sion. He played piano, and his son was getting involved in music, so they had jam sessions at his house. The first jam session I went to, I was so afraid to play a blues, that I sat underneath their grand piano! Hoping not to be seen or heard!”
Still unfamiliar with a lot of American music, Roditi remembers his first life changing exposures, “Everyone in Santos was telling me that I should check out a trumpet player from The States named Chet Baker. So, I went to the record store and asked for one of his records, but the man at the counter said, “We don’t have any Chet Baker records right now, but we have this other album. And he pulled out an album with two trumpet players on the cover, so I took it. It was Dizzy with Roy Eldridge! With Oscar Peterson on organ! That was the first album I bought. It was just so different. My ears had adapt to listen to it.”
“The next thing I bought that same year in 1959 was Miles Davis’ “’Round About Midnight” with John Coltrane, and that’s the one that really blew my mind. I absolutely loved the sound of Miles with the Harmon mute, and Red Garland, to this day, is my favorite piano. My third album was finally one by Chet Baker; his quartet recorded “live” in Ann Arbor University with Russ Freeman on piano. I liked it very much when I first heard it, but Miles turned my head around. I became a Miles fanatic for many years.”
When he arrived in America, Roditi finally had a chance to actually perform with the musicians that he’d been listening to during his youth. I came to America when I was 24, so I had played professionally for years. During the period that I played in Boston, I would go periodically to NY to play in some gigs. That’s how I met Charlie Rouse through a Brazilian pianist named Dom Salvador. Salvador produced an album for Rouse called Cinnamon Flower, an all Brazilian project. He even took that band on the road for awhile. It was great. I had the opportunity to play with Charlie Rouse at the Left Bank Jazz Society in Baltimore, which was one of the highlights of my life. We played straightahead jazz with Hugh Lawson on piano. I did another recording with Rouse on Uptown Records with Sahib Shihab. This was a very nice session at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio. I had the opportunity to play straightahead jazz with these guys I grew up listening to.”
The one that hit me the hardest was playing with Dizzy Gillespie. When, I looked back, it was 30 years before that I bought that record with Eldridge, and there I was, now playing with him! It was a weird feeling. Weird in a good sense. Pacquito D’Rivera and Dizzy’s drummer Ignacio Berroa both recommended me. It happened during my time with Pacquito’s quintet, about 1983. At some point they formed the United Nations Orchestra. When they formed the UN Orchestra, it was a lot of his latin side, “Manteca” or “Tin Tin Teo.” When I joined that band, it was primarily to perform written parts. That group was just being formed, it was 4 brass and three saxophones. Two trumpets, two trombones and three saxes. Dizzy didn’t want to play parts; he just wanted to play solos and melodies. He didn’t want to be reading arrangements. That’s why they called me in. “
The next path in Roditi’s musical pilgrimage came when he discovered the embracing autumnal sound of the flugelhorn. “The story is that when I was growing up in Rio, at one point I was subscribing to Downbeat magazine,” Roditi tells. “One day, an issue came with Art Farmer on the cover holding this fantastic looking instrument that I’d never seen before in my life. It completely freaked me out. This was around 1965. When I saw that instrument, I just went crazy; I didn’t even know the name of it. The next year in 66 I went to Europe to participate in the jazz competition in Vienna, Austria. I started to shop for an instrument there, the “flugel-horn.” When I went to the store there, they instrument they had didn’t look at all like the one that Farmer played; they only had the ones with rotary valves that you play sideways. Which is what I actually play nowadays. But then, I wanted to play the “piston” flugelhorn like Farmer was playing. I later found out that it was a French model. It took me a trip by train from Vienna to Brussels to be able to find that horn. I then played it for the longest time. So then, I began to listen of course to Art Farmer and became very influenced by him. And, he was in the jury during that competition in Vienna, so I got to hang out with him as well!”
From there, Roditi found the aural end of the rainbow, finely tuning his sound until it became the chestnut tone that graces Simpatico. “What I try to do-what my main goal is-is to make sense when I play, “ he explains. “To make a statement. And, to make a statement, I don’t have to use a lot of “words.” To have a good tone is my goal as well. I gave up trying to have high notes. I traded that for having a good sound on the horn. It is a tradeoff in some ways. If you have extremely high chops, it’s really difficult to have a full and warm sound. You can have a good sound, and many people do have a good tone, but it doesn’t in depth in the other direction.”
He’s well pleased with his latest release, as it’s his first based solely on his own compositions. It’s refreshing to know that there is life in Brazilian jazz after Jobim. Claudio agrees, “I always wanted to pay homage to the great composers in Brazil, but at some point I realized that I do have a lot of my own songs, so why not do them.” It is a challenge to not rely on the tried and true Great South American Songbook, however, as Roditi states, “It can be different. For example, I write a little bit awkward sometimes. My harmonies move to a lot of different, so it can be different if you’re playing “Quiet Nights” or “So Danco Samba” where the A section is basically “Take The A Train,” so you can just close your eyes and blow. For my songs, you really have to read them until at some point you memorize them. But the chord changes move around quite a bit. Look at “Spring Samba” and you’ll see how much it moves around.”
One of the tunes on the album is a clever play on a Jobim tune, here titled “How Intensitive.” Roditi, however, is not divulging the song’s inspiration. “That one is going to remain a secret for whom that was written. That person is very intense! I cannot make it public,” he laughs.
Living on the East Coast, Roditi rarely performs west of the Mississippi (“I ‘m about to do a festival in Seattle in April. Ballard Jazz Fest, and I’ll be playing there April 24”), he easiest way to appreciate his tone is by hearing his playing on record. Brace yourself, as it will be like holding a conversation with the James Earl Jones of the trumpet. As the great proverb says, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will play before kings.” Roditi is on his way to trumpet royalty.