7/9: DIDI – BRAZILIAN GIRLS DJ SET
DIDI – BRAZILIAN GIRLS DJ SET
www.myspace.com/djdidisolo
Didi Gutman is best known as keyboardist, composer and arranger for the Grammy Award-nominated Brazilian Girls, the New York City-based trio that Variety recently called “the only dance band that matters.” The Argentine native’s current success represents the culmination of more than fifteen years of impressive work in the studio and on the road with bold-faced names in jazz, Latin, rock and world music.
Gutman, born in Buenos Aires in 1968, has been immersed in music since his teens, studying classical and jazz piano and music theory while also pursuing his interests in popular music and learning to play the synthesizers that would figure prominently in his subsequent work. While still in high school, the 16 year-old Gutman began to play professionally, appearing on television dates and contributing to recording sessions with such Argentine jazz and rock musicians as Luis Alberto Spinetta and Miguel Mateos, significant figures in the development of Argentine rock; one-time Carlos Santana collaborator Alejandro Lerner; and pop singer Diego Torres.
Winning a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Gutman came to the United States in 1992. After studying there, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked as performer and arranger with many artists whose Latin American popularity was translating to greater recognition and sales with U.S. audiences, including the Mexican actress-singers Thaila, Paulina Rubio and Alejandra Guzman; rockers La Lupita; and the Panamanian El General, one of the creators of the Reggaeton genre.
Gutman subsequently toured with jazz composer-vibraphonist Roy Ayers and he played, recorded and composed for New York City-based bossa nova sensation Bebel Gilberto. His 2002 collaboration with Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaollala (Brokeback Mountain) on the acclaimed Bajo Fondo Tango Club CD, which explored South American music via electronic and traditional instrumentation, yielded Gutman a Latin Grammy for the song “Vacio.” Gutman has also worked with such artists as Me’Shell N’degeocello, Lauryn Hill, Grace Jones and John Legend, and he composed music for the films The Last Party and Love the Hard Way.
Brazilian Girls grew out of late-night jams at an East Village club called Nublu. Singer Sabina Sciubba, percussionist Aaron Johnston, and Gutman distilled a cool, sensual sound that, says The Los Angeles Times, “synthesizes the metropolis’ glamorous clamor.” On their latest album, the Grammy-nominated New York City, notes Billboard, “Brazilian Girls have crafted a set as internationally diverse as the Big Apple itself.” Discussing the band’s beginnings with the Chicago Sun-Times, Gutman revealed, “We had no expectations. We experimented and mixed it up however we wanted. The music has a lot to do with New York and all the cultural differences that influence us. We’re definitely a byproduct of what’s great about the city.”
Out of the melting pot of which Gutman is very much a part, Brazilian Girls have created an urban brand of music that Sciubba likes to refer to as “melting pop” – playful, alluring, and real.
When New York electro/dance band BRAZILIAN GIRLS was nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award last fall, it seemed an unlikely time for the group to go on hiatus. But singer Sabina Sciubba’s pregnancy and the recent birth of her child meant the group would be on break through this summer. Not ones to sit idly by, keyboardist Didi Gutman and drummer Aaron Johnston created a new project – entitled Re:Redux – to keep them busy until they reunite with Sabina to record the Brazilian Girls album. Aaron and Didi wrote, experimented and practiced at Nublu, the East Village bar that spawned the Brazilian Girls seven years ago. Joining with BG producer Hector Castillo, they recorded several Re:Redux tracks, soon to be released as an EP.