Community Concert: Cafe Brazil Band

Take a trip to Brazil without leaving town!

Join us for a free community concert with Cafe Brazil Band. This concert will be outside, weather permitting, so bring a blanket or chair to sit on! In case of rain, the event will be in the Russell Room.

About the band: Cafe Brazil Band, featuring Steven Silverstein on alto sax and clarinet and Peter Griggs on guitar and vocals, performs music from Brazil including bossa nova and choro by by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Roberto “Baden Powell” de Aquino, Luiz Bonfa, Pixinguinha, and others, along with several Griggs originals.. Both performers are native New Yorkers and veteran musicians with extensive experience in classical and contemporary music, jazz and world music. 

Silverstein is a master clarinetist and wind instrument specialist with an amazing versatility on literally dozens of instruments. He has performed with the Paul Winter Consort and the Adolphe Sax Saxophone Quartet, recorded numerous albums, film scores and toured internationally with major orchestras and theater groups including the National State Orchestra of Slovakia and the New York Shakespeare Festival. 

Griggs is an accomplished composer and guitarist who was based for many years in Dusseldorf Germany, and has presented some 600 solo guitar concerts throughout the USA, United Kingdom, Germany, a dozen other European countries and Brazil. Adept at the intricate rhythms of Brazilian music, he has composed numerous works for solo guitar, flute, percussion and chamber music ensembles. His work is recorded on Folkways Records, Music Of The World, Treecastle Music and CD Baby. 

While bossa nova, with its cool jazz flavors, is quite well known to American listeners after conquering the world in the 1960's, choro is virtually unknown in this country. Choro was the most popular style of music in Brazil from around 1900 through the 1930's when it was eclipsed by samba and later by bossa nova.