Entre Amigos.(Sound Recording Review)

Entre Amigos. Rosa Passos and Ron Carter. Chesky SACD291.

I have to admit I'm not a big fan of jazz or too much pop, so when this new SACD release arrived from Chesky Records, I wasn't entirely thrilled. However, it had been quite a long while since Chesky had sent me anything, and I had figured they might have gone the way of so many other audiophile labels. But here they are, David and Norman Chesky, still producing their music for discriminating listeners.

So I popped it in, a hybrid, two-layered SACD multichannel and stereo two-channel recording, playable on any CD player. I was initially both delighted and perplexed by what I heard. The music is enchanting, soft, laid-back, easy-listening Brazilian ballads, sung by Rosa Passos in a sweet, still voice, accompanied by Ron Carter on bass, Luis Galvao on guitar (along with Ms. Passos), Paulo Braga on percussion, and Billy Drewes on tenor sax and clarinet. If you recall Astrud Gilberto or Antonio Carlos Jobim and "The Girl from Ipanema," you'll like this music. And as I was expecting, "Garota de Ipanema" is even on the album. This is most bewitching music, and it is hard not to fall under its spell within just a few minutes.

The perplexing part was the sound. First, in regular two-channel stereo as I played it, it sounded quite reverberant, as though perhaps the rear channels from the multichannel recording had been folded into the front and were creating too many reflections. Nonetheless, the resonance nicely amplifies the rather dreamy quality of the music, so it's not at all distracting and not at ...