Saturday Sessions featuring Eddie Gazani

While originally from the heartland of sunshine, music and soul – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Eddie Gazani who now resides in Australia, brings the Latin grooves of his home to his unique sounds. Inspired by a love of poetry and music from a young age, he threads the themes of love, politics and humanism into his lyrics. While also a true love for performing traditional music like forro, samba and standard jazz from the golden age of jazz and Brazilian popular music. His unique sound will be complimented by his phenomenal band. Come and witness a myriad of rhythms and arrangements of well-loved Jazz, Brazilian and original tunes. Eddie is also an expert at the guitar, having a deep affinity with the 7string Brazilian classical guitar, with its unique sound and possibilities. Eddie underwent 5 months of Master Guitar Classes with 7 string guitar virtuoso Tony 7 Cordas and had the honor of performing alongside some of Rio’s great Samba and Choro Veterans.

Biography

Eddie was born with an enormous creative potential, passion and is a natural musical talent. While originally from the heartland of sunshine, music and soul – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Eddie Gazani who now resides in Australia, brings the Latin grooves of his home to his unique sounds.

With a record deal at the tender age of 19, he was twice finalist at Qmusic world music awards and finalist at the Australian songwriting competition. He has performed live on channel 9 TV for the Australian launch of the movie “Rio 2” and has performed and was interviewed countless times in local and national radio stations such as ABC and SBS in Australia. An accomplished singer, he studied jazz voice under one of Australia’s most prestigious cotemporary voice teacher, Dr. Irene Bartlet.  He completed his academic musical studies in 2015 and holds a masters in vocal pedagogy. His thesis looked into the challenges and considerations of imparting Latin music in a university setting.

The combination of Eddie’s great musical ingenuity, his extensive knowledge of Brazilian music and 7string classical guitar technique makes him follow in the footsteps of the Brazilian masters Baden Powell, Tom Jobim, Luiz Gonzaga, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque.

A musical pioneer, he creates music that is in the middle road of contradiction; contemporary, yet reminiscent of the golden age of popular music, his work with the outfit Yemanjá has been described as progressive yet traditional, sweet yet daringly deep and surely guaranteed to warm your heart, leaving no soul untouched. Following the release of the debut album “Divine is Life” in 2005 by revenge records, Yemanjá self produced its second album “Tales from Jupiter”, which was recorded in Brazil in 2007, featuring a line-up of renowned Brazilian producers and artists. In 2011, Yemanjá toured the world through Japan, Europe & Brazil with its third album Filosofia.

Eddie has performed in 4 continents in his career so far and played at many renowned international festivals like the Woodford folk festival, Bellingen global carnival festival, Turin festival of music (Italy), Tiradentes jazz festival (Brazil). He has also performed with many renowned Brazilian and Australian musicians such as Toninho Horta, Beto Lopes, Kiko Horta (accordionist/pianist of Martinho da Vila), Pernambuco (percussionist of Hermeto Pascoal, Luiz Gonzaga & Elis Regina), Carlos Cesar (drummer/percussionist of Maria Bethânia), Lincoln Cheib (drummer of Milton Nascimento), Kiko continentino, James Blundell, Doug de Vries, Mike Bevan, Charmaine Jones, Stephen Newcomb and many other stars. Eddie has recently published his first novel- “Under the kapok tree”.