Ricardo Bacelar and Airto Moreira’s Maracanós arrives as a collaboration that feels both archival in its lineage and forward-leaning in its execution. Recorded at Bacelar’s Jasmin Studio in Fortaleza and released via Jasmin Music, the project brings together two musicians operating from different vantage points in Brazilian music, yet aligned in their interest in improvisation, texture, and formal freedom.
At the center is Airto Moreira, whose career has long defined a certain borderless idea of jazz percussion. After early work with Miles Davis and later associations with Chick Corea and Weather Report, Airto helped reshape how rhythm functions inside modern jazz, treating percussion less as timekeeping and more as a parallel melodic language. On Maracanós, that philosophy remains intact, though softened by age into something more spacious and reflective.
Opposite him is Ricardo Bacelar, who acts as both co-composer and sonic architect. Bacelar’s production folds acoustic piano, electric keyboards, modular synthesizers, and field-like textures into arrangements that rarely settle into predictable grooves. Instead, the album moves in fragments, closer to a suite of evolving sound environments than a conventional set of songs.
The record’s most striking feature is its refusal to isolate tradition from experimentation. Tracks like “Voo da Tarde,” which features a vocal appearance from Flora Purim, draw on the airy, wordless vocal approach she helped pioneer in the 1970s while embedding it in a more contemporary electronic and chamber framework. Strings from the Kalimera String Quartet appear intermittently, adding a controlled orchestral weight that contrasts with Airto’s fluid percussion work.
What emerges is not a genre statement but a process document. Bacelar has described the project as partially born out of a filming process for an accompanying documentary, and that sense of unfolding creation is audible throughout. Pieces feel assembled in real time, even when clearly structured, as if the studio itself were functioning as an instrument.
Not everything lands with equal force. At times the density of ideas can blur the emotional directness of the music, and the fusion of electronic and acoustic elements occasionally feels more studied than instinctive. Yet even in its more crowded moments, Maracanós remains anchored by Airto’s presence, which brings a human looseness to Bacelar’s more controlled environments.
Featured Image: Artist Supplied
