Yamandu Costa Trio
Friday, 15 August 2008 @ 7.30 pm • Van Dusen Botanical Garden

Reviewer Ed Farolan


What an event! Reminds me of the ol' hippie days when you'd lie down on the grass and look at the sky and breathe nature around you. And it was worth breathing the air around VanDusen while listening to this hip group play their (using the overwrought word) "eclectic" music.

I would rate their music 5 out of 10. There are just so many of these trios and all kinds of musicians with their own creative techniques that they begin to sound all alike. Unique, but alike, in that paradoxical sense.

A real virtuouso, the talented Brazilian musician Yamandu Costa is an improviser, and that was why perhaps there weren't any programmes handed out by the ushers for this performance. He himself probably didn't know what he was going to play, or improvise. This young man has been influenced by so many composers that his sound is too universal to judge. There's a little of Jobim, especially when he hums and strums his guitar; there's some tango from Piazzolla, bits and pieces of Reinhardt, and contemporary Argentinian gaucho melodies.

His collaborators, Nicolas Krassic (violin) and Guto Wirtti (bass) complemented his strings, and at times, during the 90 minute concert, would do solos. Krassic had a combination of classic tunes, but then, he would go cowboy on the audience and play fiddle for square dancing, and then, in another number, do the Irish jig or the Acadian fiddling. Writti would mostly stay in the background, as most bassists do, but he also had his solo moments.

All in all, the VanDusen crowd enjoyed this open air concert, clamouring for more when the trio bowed out to end the show, but came back again for an encore performing another improvisational number .

© 2008 Ed Farolan