ANATOMY OF AN IMPROVISER: THE STYLE OF NAILOR AZEVEDO “PROVETA”
Manuel Silveira Falleiros
1.2. First Lessons in Leme
Nailor’s initial musical instruction came from his father, Geraldo Azevedo. Although his father had learned music from his own grandfather, he also took private accordion lessons. Geraldo additionally played the clarinet, saxophone, and organ.
Thus, beyond technical musical knowledge, his father had something more intangible to transmit to Nailor: a tradition. That is to say, a constellation of values and beliefs that inform specific behaviors. Gradually, Nailor found himself entirely immersed in a continuum that united his own existence with that of his father and grandfather. The contact with his father was profoundly significant for Nailor, both emotionally and musically. Nailor remarks that “from seven to fourteen years old was the crucial period, this contact on my father’s side […]” and adds, “it was like that, phenomenal, I thought it was amazing.”
Siblings likely experienced, as is common, a degree of competition for parental love and attention. Although we cannot precisely ascertain this dynamic, it is highly probable that the relationship between Nailor and his father intensified as a reward for his growing musical success during childhood. In this competition for parental affection, children invest their energy, develop, and apply strategies. This leads us to consider that, beyond his capacity to absorb knowledge, Nailor concentrated his efforts to develop extraordinary speed in his musical learning.
Therefore, in addition to participating in the classes offered by the musical corporation, Nailor’s father strengthened their bond and began providing weekly “private lessons” with Nailor:
“[…] on Mondays and Wednesdays I had evening music lessons, solfejo; on Tuesdays and Fridays there were rehearsals—every Tuesday and Friday at 7:30 p.m. we were rehearsing at the band headquarters; on Saturdays I performed at dance events with my father; on Sundays there was the retreta (T.N.: “Sunday bandstand performance”); on Thursdays I had lessons with my father […]”²⁷
Nailor emphasizes that his musical learning was always a “living” process—that is, he immediately applied in performances what he had learned. One common method of learning in popular music is oral transmission, without the aid of notation. Nailor learned pieces through recordings, making transcriptions, or simply learning to reproduce them on his instrument.
Even in childhood, Nailor found himself occupied with numerous music-related tasks. Among these, one stands out: learning pieces from the choro repertoire, often without sheet music, relying solely on recordings or on listening to another musician’s performance. His father assigned him this task so that they could play together, and he required Nailor to be proficient in executing them:
“[…] when he was six years old, his father would take a record by a musician, a choro, and tell him: ‘Look, figure this out, because tonight when I get home I want to play it with you.’ So I think there is no better school than this. You learn by listening, you refine the music by listening. And if you start this early, it is much easier to assimilate everything. He developed this aspect of perception very early on.”²⁸
Many facts become stories when viewed through a single perspective. Through the interviews, we cannot determine with precision how much time Nailor dedicated to this task, nor can we ascertain his ease in completing it or the time he required to finish. However, we observe that he consistently approached learning new pieces with voracious intensity, even when the motivation did not originate solely from Nailor himself. Recalling his father, we find a clue suggesting that memorizing pieces from the choro repertoire was an arduous task, and that his father held him to high standards with austerity:
“But it wasn’t all beautiful; I cried. There were days when things got tough: ‘You’re not managing to play it’ [recalling his father], ‘What’s happening?’ Sometimes he was forceful, he demanded. He would say, ‘You have to manage it, otherwise….’”²⁹
Thus, we understand that Nailor may have required strong and recurrent encouragement to undertake and complete this type of task. After all, as noted in the previous chapter, music was not to be treated as a pastime or mere amusement, which certainly does not alleviate the effort of practicing for hours daily and constantly demonstrating one’s progress to his father. Yet his father recognized that this ability to learn and perform pieces without sheet music would confer significant advantages to Nailor, even if, due to contextual constraints (scarcity of sheet music), it was sometimes the only viable means of making music. According to Jane Ginsborg, in her study Strategies for Memorizing Music³⁰, there are numerous practical advantages to performing music without relying on score reading. However, most importantly, when a piece is memorized, the connection the performer establishes with it becomes markedly more intimate. Consequently, the performer’s relationship with the audience becomes more sincere, which in turn enriches the performance in multiple ways.
The development of the ability to play any piece by ear, in the process of acquiring this repertoire, was continuous for Nailor from childhood. This process consists of performing music that is first consolidated in memory, retained through listening. This practice—playing music de cor (from memory)—throughout childhood fostered the development of two distinct skills in Nailor. The first is a privileged memory, with highly detailed retention of what he heard. The second is the ability to reproduce what is stored in memory without difficulty, both by playing and by notating in sheet music:
“[…] he would transcribe just by listening; he would find the first note to check, then he would continue without an instrument. […] His strength is precisely this: he hears something, and if he knows it, if he has heard it before, he can play it. In any key, in any situation, on any instrument.”³¹
“The ease he has with listening stems precisely from this training he had in childhood.”³²
In this context, “listening” does not merely mean allowing music to pass by, but actively imposing critical judgment. Educators affirm that transcription is one of the most effective exercises for improving aural perception, as the task of transcribing requires careful, analytical listening.
Nailor employed differentiated strategies for retaining pieces in memory throughout various phases of his life. These strategies are feasible because they leverage the structure of memory itself. According to the model adapted by Jane Ginsborg³³ from Atkinson and Shiffrin³⁴, this structure comprises three main components: sensory register, short-term memory (working memory), and long-term memory. The sensory register holds memories received from environmental stimuli through our various senses (vision, audition, etc.). When information is deemed relevant, it is transferred to short-term memory, or working memory. At this stage, the information can be studied and elaborated so as to be stored—that is, assimilated alongside existing knowledge in long-term memory. It is at this juncture that we must attend to a phenomenon occurring in this process. Long-term memory is responsible for storing information across three distinct components: procedural (knowing how to do), semantic (knowing what something is), and episodic (recalling particular life events). Crucially, these three components must interact for us to execute activities based on memory. For example, when a musician performs a melody, they activate these three memory components: using technique (procedural) to operate the instrument, applying knowledge of intervals and rhythms (semantic) to construct the melody, and drawing upon personal recollections (episodic) embedded in their manner of playing (memories of the first time they heard the piece, or the most recent).
Therefore, the process of transcription, for repertoire acquisition, played a significant role in the development of Nailor’s musical memory. Indeed, the first step toward ultimately retaining a piece in memory—no matter how complex or extensive—is our sensory contact with it. Obviously, when discussing transcription, this initial contact occurs through audition, and listening with the purpose of capturing information is more acute regarding sonic particularities. The second stage consists of organizing this received information so that it may be comprehended; in transcription, this stage refers to notating in sheet music, which organizes sounds within the conventional musical system and enables the intellect to identify structures and act upon understanding. The final stage, in which the music is stored long-term in long-term memory, occurs when its three components are prepared to interact. That is, the crucial observation at this final stage is that technique, knowledge, and personal episodes are brought to the fore for memory to be consolidated. For this reason, we often observe Nailor referring to musical structures through highly personal linguistic figures or imaginative events, which frequently extend beyond the strictly musical domain; after all, this is nothing other than an attempt to communicate, through oral language, the manifestation of one component of his musical memory.
The selection of pieces that would form his repertoire appears to have followed certain criteria. These were pieces his father selected for two reasons. First, to expand a repertoire that Nailor performed regularly; after all, even as a child, he already accompanied his father at Saturday dance events:
“He would perform at dance events like this: he would fall asleep behind the stage, his father would say: ‘Go up there and play, it’s showtime,’ then he would play half a dozen choros […] and go back to sleep.”³⁴
Second, to provide Nailor with a technical challenge, compelling him to surpass himself with each new piece.
Including the wind band, formal studies, and the dance events he performed with his father, Nailor’s repertoire comprised a miscellany of styles: excerpts from opera arias transcribed for symphonic band, all manner of classical compositions from various periods, marches and dobrados, maxixes, commercial radio music, samba, gafieira, various styles of jazz, and choro. Nailor did not employ, nor did he make, aesthetic distinctions regarding repertoire; he played all types of music. He did not elect a preferred style, nor did he express prejudice against others:
“[…] we learned everything, it was the repertoire of music […]”
“You know what was great about that time? […] I think people made music, you know, functional. Today, for example, I see people with prejudices […] that didn’t exist back then.”³⁵
Moreover, this training yielded another highly positive outcome for Nailor in the creative domain: before entering adolescence, he had already accumulated a considerable repertoire of pieces.
“So from seven to thirteen I already had a very large repertoire, already beforehand, by heart [from memory]. Because my father […] he would sometimes annotate some sheet music […]”³⁶
This work of learning a repertoire—memorizing pieces and transcribing them—brought advantages to his musical development, according to Nailor himself. One particularly important advantage for improvisation is the reflex of reproducing on the instrument a piece held in memory, which obviously depends on a clear and precise musical memory.
The importance of this repertoire, as Nailor commented, is that it represents a decisive point in the constitution of musical language, since the repertoire served as the field of samples for his empirical experience in seeking his musical concepts:
“[…] the need to organize something that we didn’t know what it was, but today I know: that is the so-called language. […] you need to play a lot, build a lot of repertoire, which is something people don’t do today; that’s the difference—people don’t have repertoire nowadays, they don’t have sufficient material to absorb and then transform into a language.”³⁷
Therefore, from Nailor’s perspective, at this point the prerequisites had already been established for him to begin improvising. These were: an intuitive understanding of melodic line construction, coupled with the technical ability to execute it; and a substantial repertoire, which formed his field of samples.
Nailor was ready for the lesson he considers the most important among those he received from his father—and here lies the core of this study: the concept of improvisation.
“‘You play a melody; when you return [repeat the theme], you play another melody, but stay close to the first one.’ That was his lesson. […] He knew that improvisation was a melody. So he would say: ‘Stay close to the first one, don’t go far, because you won’t be able to return.’ That was the first and last improvisation lesson I ever had.”³⁸
Nailor had encountered improvisation previously, around age ten, when, at his father’s suggestion, he began transcribing solos by jazz saxophonists, clarinetists, and other instrumentalists such as Richie Kamuca, Frank Rosolino, Bill Holman, and Benny Goodman. However, he had not yet attained full comprehension of them. “I would listen and tell my father: ‘I don’t understand this here!’”³⁹ At that time, the location, and indeed the general conditions in which Nailor found himself, did not facilitate access to specialized materials on improvisation. His father, therefore, employed figures and metaphors as resources to bring Nailor closer to this knowledge. This mode of musical instruction, oriented toward subjective and sometimes abstract terms, left marks on his manner of expressing himself about his music. Such resources, which stimulated his imagination, tangentially participated in the formation of his formal structure of musical thought. Even in his current work, Nailor orients himself by these image-based resources directed toward fantasy.
“[…] ‘you have to learn to imagine the pieces.’”⁴⁰
Perhaps unknowingly, his father was thus exercising the components of Nailor’s musical memory. For this reason, Nailor possesses a personal vocabulary for expressing his own poetics, and he believes it is effective and very clear in its function. However, because it is so personal and often related to extra-musical elements, it can generate difficulties when we attempt to understand and systematize it. On the other hand, his musical conception is directly based on this vocabulary, which he translates artistically with great efficacy.
This concept of improvisation as a variation of the original melody became deeply embedded in Nailor’s creative thought; at times, he extended this concept to other areas of his musical production, such as arranging.
His father introduced him to arranging while Nailor was still a child. With his father’s help and suggestions, Nailor began producing arrangements that were performed by the wind band in his city:
“It was easy to see, the way he explained it […], but then I made several for the band—simple arrangements, nothing fancy. But it was the opportunity I was having to write for a band. It was an impressive thing for me at the time, to hear the arrangement, and the Maestro helped, he wanted to see it.”⁴¹
Just as from his father, Nailor received, within the musical corporation, many lessons that proved significant for his technical instrumental development (in addition to behavioral formation, as discussed in the previous chapter), as well as for his aural perception and musical conception.
Beyond noting, in the previous chapter, Carlos Malaquias’s emphasis on how discipline was enforced, in another passage he highlights the formative role of the band:
“It was a school. It was a place to learn music, because you learned everything in these bands. You learned to play, to play in tune, because there was a Maestro there, and normally the Maestros […] had knowledge…”
As also noted in the previous chapter, Nailor joined the Corporação Musical Maestro Ângelo Constantino, where he received lessons in solfejo, theory, and saxophone. His teacher there, Ari Basciotti, was the Mestre de Banda—that is, he had the function of conducting the band, teaching theory, and instructing on all instruments. It was he who provided Nailor with his first saxophone exercises.
It is already clear that the wind band represents, in the national context, one of the most important institutions—and often the only one—in which it is possible to develop basic musical studies. All musicians interviewed for this study agree that the wind band provides training that qualifies, especially wind players, for the professional market. Moreover, this professional trained in the wind band is generally, for varied reasons, better equipped with skills to, if desired, become a professional musician. We believe this occurs not precisely due to the quality of instruction—since conditions are often not ideal, with teachers lacking specific (let alone advanced) expertise and suboptimal structural conditions. Rather, what matters in this case is the experience of music in its multiplicity: that is, playing the instrument alone, within the section, studying theory, solfejo, harmony, and, in Nailor’s case, writing arrangements from childhood.
The discipline and the specific character formation of the musician within the wind band differentiate them from those who did not undergo this training. This childhood experience is, in Carlos Malaquias’s opinion, what musically differentiates—in terms of professional skills—Nailor’s current work. According to Carlos, one of the skills the wind band is responsible for providing is training related to aural perception, which, in his view, fosters the ability to play in ensemble:
“…normally the person isn’t listening, isn’t listening to the section; many times you are in unison with another instrument, and the person who hasn’t been through a band—we’re not generalizing, especially here in Brazil where there isn’t this discipline, this school…”
Musical language is also discussed within the wind band, where musicians learn to distinguish musical genres and the identifying elements of each. Later in the interview, Carlos affirms that the band-trained musician, as opposed to one without this background, is trained to perform pieces collectively and interpret them with greater authority, due to the practical knowledge acquired through the variety of musical styles encountered in the repertoire. Carlos comments on errors committed by musicians not taught through the band, clarifying the differences:
“So each one ends up playing individually for themselves. It’s not collective. It’s a way of thinking. And this involves languages too, besides the issue of sonority, because in a wind band you play maxixe, frevo, you play waltz, you play choro, you play everything. So when you go to play in a big band, the person who has been through this band already knows naturally that the language is that one and that they are playing with someone, and they pay more attention to the music’s own dynamics, because they learned with a Maestroin front of them saying constantly: ‘Here it’s piano, here it’s crescendo, here it’s forte, here it’s articulated, here it isn’t’…”
These comments reveal the importance of the wind band in the practical musical formation of the Brazilian musician, especially wind instrumentalists. The perspective offered by Vitor Alcântara⁴² regarding skills in sight-reading, composition, arranging, and ensemble playing serves well to synthesize the preceding examples concerning Nailor’s abilities—results exclusively of his years of study in the wind band:
“The person doesn’t play by chance; they didn’t build that concept by chance; they were very intelligent in organizing themselves. This exists in Proveta: his strength lies in what he trained the most. What is Proveta’s strength? He played a lot in bands, so what happens? He has a notion of group sound, of brass, which is fundamental for writing arrangements. So he writes thinking about saxophones, trumpets, trombones; he doesn’t write randomly, like many computer-based arrangers who, after writing, say: ‘But that’s not what I imagined!’ ‘Please, I needed to breathe’—there’s no place to breathe, it was made by the computer, right? And he has this concern. This thing of choro, of his family, of the inland tradition, gave him something: he memorized choros by ear. The little band, besides giving him this notion of group, also gave him the notion of reading…”
M: Is the band an important school in Brazil? V: At that time, it was fundamental. […]”
Familiarity with writing for the band, although we cannot guarantee that the results at that time were representative of his style, was certainly a practice that Nailor continued and refined through courses and lessons he undertook later. His current works, even when clothed in greater sophistication, often evoke traces of his past.
Nailor cites a concept of improvisation as the first and last improvisation lesson he received, which is not, in its entirety, accurate. After all, as we shall see, contact with more experienced musicians in this regard provided him with exchange and acquisition of knowledge regarding formal procedures in the study of improvisation. However, the concept given by his father was and remains Nailor’s guide in the construction, in terms of macro-structure, of his improvised solos, as we will examine in greater detail shortly.
As we intended to demonstrate, we can conclude, based on the events comprising Nailor’s childhood and adolescence, that the lessons received from his father were decisive in the construction of his musical thought, and that they constitute a guide for his current musical expression. Among his father’s lessons, the one that permeated his entire experience with music and became most relevant to his current work is: a) The concept of improvisation as variation of the melody.
We may enumerate others, which in reality are not direct lessons, but skills that emerged through practice in the studies requested by his father: b) Development of the ability to reproduce what is stored in memory and apply it to any musical situation. c) Musical knowledge conveyed through figures of speech and metaphors.
Gradually, Nailor distanced himself from his hometown and his teachers. At age twelve, he began performing in dance bands. He met other musicians and traveled to other cities. Around 1975, he performed in Pirassununga, and later in Valinhos with a group called “Banda do Brejo.” In 1976, at age fifteen, he enrolled at the Carlos Gomes Conservatory in Campinas, studying clarinet. He participated in recitals and competitions, encountered the classical repertoire oriented toward the instrument, yet continued performing at dance events.
Contact with more informed and experienced musicians began when Nailor, then sixteen, joined the Silvio Mazzuca Orchestra—a fact that generated new demands in instrumental technique, in addition to broadening his knowledge of interpretation, notation, and improvisation. These are the subjects that will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter.