Sao Paolo – the largest city in South America! And you can feel that it is indeed big. A 20 minute taxi ride just takes you next door and there are some streets that are jam packed with people. We only had one day to see some of Sao Paolo plus one evening when we went to Vila Magdalena, a truly great neighborhood with hundreds of packed bars and restaurants. We instantly knew that THIS IS the city in Brazil where things are happening. We ate sushi all the time as it is excellent and cheap here – Sao Paolo has a large Japanese population and an oriental district called Liberdade.
We walk around the centro and we saw some really interesting looking people and shops. Near the market there is a street which is flooded by thousands and thousands of people and which has the most awkward shops one can imagine. Two storey large stores are selling costumes – you can buy batman, spiderman, you name it. And people do seem to shop there! Around the area we saw very large shops dedicated only for coat hangers – different sizes and colours -, others were only selling glasses or bijou. Imagine large – like a middle size supermarket full of coat hangers – and not only one shop but many! The Municipal Market is great – we saw even more exotic fruit and vegetables and tons of dried fish.
We visited Liberdade, went to a FNAC to buy some more CDs – I think we have about 60 or 70 now, will be fun to take them home – and I bought some – again, very heavy – books to continue my studies of Portuguese. Towards the evening we walked around Avenida Paulinista where all the office buildings are. From the various taxis we took, we saw many different faces of the city – we were really going around a bit but only managed to see a tiny part of the city.
The second concert with Andrea Bocelli was very nice with an incredible number of 25000 people watching the show. This time there were some local stars invited – Toquinho, the famous bossa nova guitarist and Ivete Sangalo, Brazilian super pop star singer. The audience was very excited about Ivete’s appearance – well, it did not impress us so much and Garota de Ipanema would have needed a bit more rehearsal together for such a big crowd and concert. Anyway, the public was very excited about Bocelli and Ivete singing together and her appearance made the headline for the Folha de Sao Paolo (leading daily paper). Thanks to this, Robi’s picture is in the paper and we saw him also on television the following morning.
All in all, it was a truly great experience – not only for Robi to meet the orchestra and make some new friends there, but also to see this big show from backstage. For me it was a bit strange not to have to work, but it was fun to see how things were managed – or mismanaged sometimes… I have not been to an Andrea Bocelli concert so it was a new experience to observe who was in the audience. It is amazing how he unites old and young, rich and poor. Old ladies were singing the Italian opera-pop along Bocelli but many rather cool looking young people also were extatic about him. Interesting.
After our return Robi was very busy preparing the girls for the concert on 14 May. I was a little bit ill – as I said, autumn arrived and I got cold. Luckily the weather is fantastic again and Buenos Aires (where we were last weekend) cured my illness.
The other big event of last week was the 24 hour Choro day to celebrate the most famous choro composer’s, Pixinginha’s birthday. He composed – amongst hundreds of others – the song called Carinhoso which seems to be the second national anthem – whenever it is played, everybody sings along. This is a very beautiful song and I especially love the soft tongue of Portuguese. It is worth checking out this version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IhqXDQkWpQ or also the one Joao Gilberto sings on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzvrg-vLz94
The 24 hour Choro really started at midnight on 22rd April at the Beto Batata bar, and continued non-stop there, in the main street of the city (in front of the HSBC headquarter) and in the Conservatory of MPB. We went to the bar at around 10pm and Robi joined in with Joao Egashira’s Roda de Choro along with the excellent clarinet player Sergio de Meira Albach (he is the music director of a wind orchestra called Orquestra Á Base de Sopro. There was also Julião Boêmio playing the cavaquinho – this is the mini guitar with 4 strings. It was amazing because he is a really big man and I seriously don’t understand how his fingers cope with the tiny neck of the cavaquinho. But he is an excellent player. It was very nice and of course it finished with everybody singing Carinhoso. Robi was struggling a bit because he had to improvise for almost 2 hours but he made some nice contributions.
The next update will be about our amazing trip to Buenos Aires and about TANGO!
