I don’t know about you but for me certain albums are colored by memory. Whenever I put on Ricardo Fabini’s Cidade De Cristal it brings me back to a certain difficult time I had to go through. On those days where I felt a bit aimless, a bit withdrawn, all over the place – yet decidedly unlike myself, I found myself drawn to Ricardo’s placid guitar-centered instrumentals. Somehow, I felt a certain peace by listening to his music.
What little I could find about Ricardo, I can share. Although born and raised in Uruguay, Ricardo’s musical journey actually began in Brazil. Drawn and inspired by the new wave of post-bossanova music, Ricard traveled to São Paulo where he became deeply involved in its jazz scene and studied under the great singer-songwriter, Toquinho. Before he settled into Portugal, where he lives now, Ricardo had been part of numerous bands and sessions taking him all over Latin America and Spain.
It was in Portugal that Ricardo was afforded his sole opportunity to create a record under his own name, to express his own ideas, under his own instruments. Thankfully, Ricardo found a home under the Numerica label. Under Numerica, Ricardo was able to reorient his guitar technique under more contemporary styles that this label was exploring; working on records by others under its umbrella that touched on genres like “modern classical”, “modal jazz” and “new music”. Under Numerica, Ricardo’s crystalline guitar tone served as this perfect textural instrument to add a certain emotional heft to what could be very cerebral music.
Left to his own devices, augmented by guitar and keyboard synthesizers, Ricardo’s melodic grounding was able to express a certain saudade and elegant grace that touched on his early inspiration but also appeared present, to the moment, creating music that was forward-thinking and aspirational. It’s that special something you hear in his Cidade De Cristal.
Aided by the wonderfully understated rhythms of Portuguese percussionist, Quiné, songs like “Nova Era” from Cidade De Cristal have a certain floating musical sojourning that hovers momentarily, in spirit, through the longing sound of Brazilian-influenced jazz, but cocks its head downward, spiriting light electronic touches that envelop around softly, filling the bits where Ricardo’s guitar can’t quite reach. If one can make any comparisons, I’d say it’s for you to imagine someone taking the open-hearted denouement of Pat Metheny’s “Antonia” and stretching it out until it becomes its own beautiful navel-gazing style (at least, for some 40-odd minutes).
The barely-there pasodoble of “Bossan Dombre” gently picks up the pace in a way that feels of the larger feeling left by the album. Over muted guitar picking, a lilting Latin groove lingers over grace notes that appear tinged with hazy, in between, feelings. The balladry of songs like “Esa Luz” and “Morlen” explore the fuller range of midtempo, sussing out (once again) wonderfully tasteful languid feelings out of expertfully chosen lead lines. Those who can appreciate good technique, can appreciate just how much Ricardo can express by quietly leaving out the excesses of mannerism. Songs like “Sierras De Petropolis” and “Reviviendo” have all that impressive improv of jazz but that special accessibility of something else, something more homespun.
The beauty I hear in Ricardo Fabini’s Cidade De Cristal appears more in the unobtrusive manner it commands your attention. Much like Yoshio Suzuki’s Touch Of Rain, songs like the titular track don’t much as carve out new territory but journey for ideas that express self-reflection, perhaps explaining the fragile meanings behind the record title.
For days when all sorts of “noise” seems to easily get you, there’s a time and place for music that treads softly, moving your hard-earned attention elsewhere. And for me, here’s a whole collection of it beckoning us to just tuck inside and wait for the wandering storm to pass over.