“Bloco em FoCo” will be under the creative direction of Marcus Santos, a widely respected Brazilian percussionist living in Boston. You may have seen or met him last summer at the “Symphony for 1000 drums” event to honor the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. He will be traveling to Fort Collins periodically to train and rehearse with us, and we will back him up this July at an event sponsored by Beet Street called "Samba for 1000 Drums". He will choose the pieces the rhythms and arrangements we play, at least at the outset, many of which will be his own compositions. Our ultimate goal is to build a self-sustaining group with its own style and repertoire, performing with and without Marcus at events and gigs in Northern Colorado and Southeastern Wyoming. Check out Marcus' website www.marcussantos.com: see the videos, and in particular the PASIC video. He is also affiliated with www.afrobrazil.org, an organization that he co-founded and of which he is the artistic director. The goal is to promote Afro-Brazilian music and culture in the US. There are several video and audio clips here as well, which give a sense of the kinds of music he’s involved in playing and composing. A more complete PASIC 2007 clip is hidden on the site, which can be accessed via www.afrobrazil.org/pasic.php . One of Marcus’ groups called “Bloco AfroBrazil” has a myspace site http://www.myspace.com/afrobrazil, where you can hear and see more of his music. Marcus is an accomplished pandeiro player (Portuguese tambourine), and he has another website www.playpandeiro.com, to promote his DVD “A Modern Approach to Pandeiro”. There are several clips of Marcus, with and without accompaniment, on YouTube. See, for example, ‘Marcus Santos – gurujay’ and ‘Marcus Santos – gutchaka’ which give a sense of his teaching and leadership style, while ‘Marcus Santos – modern approach to pandeiro’ is a promo clip for his pandeiro DVD. See also his group “Bloco B-Town”, a group composed of students from Brookline High School, where he teaches music full time. Finally, you can listen to more of his music at CD Baby www.cdbaby.com – preview Marcus Santos’ Batukaxe, the CD released last year. The drums and hand percussion for Bloco em FoCo will include:
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