This album is so mello and smooth you could take a moment to sit in your yard and imagine a peaceful pond even if you have no water in your yard.  This is a tremendous selection of tunes to make all right no matter what is going on at work or home.

Yo Yo Ma will be a Ravinia later next month on the 7th of
August.  You will want to hear him play there and get this
album, especially if you don't have that pond in your yard.

This is not the first time that Ma has worked with others of varied talents in different forms of folk and popular music and like his previous works this is a hit.  Thanks for bringing your wonderful talent and Brazil into my heart.

I have the pond and the album and everything is fine.

Ma Collaborates With Stars Of Brazilian, Latin American Music Including Egberto Gismonti, Paquito D'Rivera, Oscar Castro-Neves, Cyro Baptista, Sergio & Odair Assad, More
  Musicians Reunite For Performances At Tanglewood & Ravinia Festivals, Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Kennedy Center Scheduled for August & September

(New York, NY, July 29, 2003) - Cellist Yo-Yo Ma returns to the sounds and rhythms of Latin America with his latest Sony Classical recording Obrigado Brazil, exploring the rich
variety of the music of Brazil. Ranging from the popular sounds of samba, bossa nova and choro to the classical music of such composers as Heitor Villa-Lobos, the recording teams Ma with some of today's hottest performers in Brazilian and Latin American music - multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti, guitarists Oscar Castro-Neves, Romero Lubambo and duo-guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad, singer/guitarist Rosa Passes, clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera, pianists Cesar Camargo Mariano and Kathryn Stott, and percussionist Cyro Baptista.   Obrigado Brazil will be released on Tuesday, July 29, 2003.

"I've always loved Brazilian music," Ma says. "There's an undercurrent of sensuality in it that is incredibly seductive. It's a place between the conscious and the unconscious - a place where the rational and the irrational meet."

Yo-Yo Ma won one of his 14 Grammy Awards for his first recording of music from South America - Sou/ of the Tango, featuring works by Argentina's master of nuevo tango,
composer Astor Piazzolla. Jorge Calandrelli arranged the music on that recording, and he has returned to create the arrangements for Obrigado Brazil, with Egberto Gismonti
and Sergio Assad contributing the arrangements for their own compositions.

Obrigado Brazil embraces the full range of Brazil's unusually diverse musical culture.  The cool intensity of samba and bossa nova may be the calling card of Brazilian music today, but it derives from a richly layered musical tradition that begins with indigenous sounds and rhythms that have been transformed by European and African influences.

Even Brazil's foremost classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos founded his work on these sounds.

Yo-Yo Ma and the other musicians on Obrigado Brazil will tour throughout the summer and into the fall. After performances in Amsterdam, Cologne and London, they will appear at the 
 

Tanglewood Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts (August 3); Ravinia Festival in Chicago (August 7);
the Hollywood Bowl (August 10); 
the Kennedy Center in
Washington (September 23) 
and the opening festival at Zankel Hall in New York's
Carnegie Hall (September 24).

Joining Ma on Obrigado Brazil in new treatments of their own works are Egberto Gismonti ("Bodas de Prata" & "Quatro Cantos" and "Salvador"), Sergio Assad ("Menino") and Cesar Camargo Mariano ("Cristal" and "Samambaia"). "All of the musicians on this album are absolute masters of their specific genres of Brazilian music, and everybody is incredibly generous," Ma says. "The recording session was like one long party - really warm and festive."

Two songs of bossa nova master Antonio Carlos Jobim may be the most instantly recognizable tracks on Obrigado Brazil - "Chega de saudade" and "0 amor em paz," both featuring Rosa Passes' rapt vocals echoing the sound of Jobim and Joao Gilberto's original recordings. Oscar Castro-Neves joins Ma in a delicate, sensuous duet version of "Apelo" by the influential guitarist/composer Baden Powell.   The legendary instrumentalist Pixinguinha - one of the first black Brazilian musicians to win international fame - is represented here by "1x0" and "Carinhoso." Composer Waldir Azevedo's "Brasileirinho," a hit from the 1940s, is one of five chores
on Obrigado Brazil, this one bringing Ma together with D'Rivera, Lubambo, Baptista and  others. The choro is a uniquely Brazilian form that blends African rhythms and
 Portuguese popular musical styles with European classical influences. Also included here is "Doce de coco" by the mandolin virtuoso Jaco do Bandolim, one of the masters
of the choro who gained international fame in the 1950s and 1960s.

From the world of Brazilian classical music come two pieces by Villa-Lobos ("Alma  brasileira" and "A lenda do cabocio") and two works by the 20th-century composer  Mozart Camargo Guarnieri ("Dansa brasileira" and "Dansa negra").

An exclusive Sony Classical artist, Yo-Yo Ma recently released Paris - La Belle Epoque, a disc of French Romantic violin works transcribed for cello, with pianist Kathryn Stott.  The work of his internationally acclaimed Silk Road Project also has been documented  in the Sony Classical CD Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet.

 Yo-Yo Ma's Obrigado Brazil will be featured on Sony Classical's Web site at  www.sonyclassical.com and on Yo-Yo Ma's artist domain at www.Yo-YoMa.com. 

 www.Sonyclassical.com is an online resource for exploring the label's entire catalogue of  recordings, and includes sound clips, track listings, cover art and other information about  the recordings.  The site also features an online radio show, album supersites,  multimedia, artist biographies, tour schedules and discographies for all Sony Classical  artists, as well as special promotions, and much more.