I've traveled the world documenting music, but sometimes a chance meeting in my home town of New York City yields treasures. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the club Le Poisson Rouge and I bumped into an earnest young man who said he worked with some really great Brazilian musicians who were coming to town….and did I want to maybe do a shoot? When he said they played choro music, I figured it was worth checking out. Choro is a kind of urban folk music that grew out of a merging of European and Brazilian sensibilities, and it calls on the player to be agile, inventive and swinging. The emphasis on improvisation makes people compare it to jazz, but if one is going to do that, let's specify that it's a lot more Django than Miles. It's accessible music in every way.

The choro was being performed at The Living Room, on the lower east side of Manhattan, a cozy club with two performance spaces. Douglas Lora is a classically trained guitarist, who plays a seven string axe, and Dudu Maia also plays an altered instrument, a mandolin (called bandolim, in Brazil) with 10 strings, as opposed to the usual 8. Both are well respected musicians back home, and part of their tour consisted of choro workshops. They are also part of a full-out band called Caraivana, which they plan on touring with next time around, but on this occasion they were a duo.

The concert was well attended; people just seemed to drift in until the room was quite full. It was a great way to spend an evening, in a comfortable, intimate space. It's what I love about New York; yes, the big, well known places may get the big well known acts, but that doesn't mean they
are better. Maia and Lora were world class, and at some point maybe they will play a venue where you really have to fork over the money-- but that night, it was just about the music.