Cyro Baptista joins Todd Clouser at Icehouse
Music fans in the Twin Cities will have a chance to see how a favorite musicial son continues to evolve when guitarist Todd Clouser performs Saturday at the Icehouse restaurant in Minneapolis.
Joining him on state will be percussionist Cyro Baptista, a Brazilian native known for his collaborations with Herbie Hancock, Paul Simon, John Zorn and others.
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Baptista has been on tour with Clouser and his band, A Love Electric, which also includes bassist Aaron Cruz and drummer Hernan Hecht. The percussionist’s presence on the bandstand adds further international zest to A Love Electric, a unique project based in Mexico.
"We did a 12-dates tour of Mexico together in 2012 and got to be family," the guitarist said this week. "That's the way Cyro goes about things. It's all humanity, and that takes the music to a very special, and more potent place."
A compelling storyteller and vocalist, Baptista will playing birimbao (a Brazilian stringed instrument), bells, PVC pipes with sandals, a fire hydrant, and more traditional percussion. His fellow musicians say he infuses the music with a unique curiosity, energy and emotion.
"To me, Cyro Baptista is all joy -- wise joy, the learned and fought-for kind," Clouser said. "He's all artist but not void of our more innate sensibilities, operating in a world where he wants to communicate with everyone he can reach, which I find refreshing.
"I don't know of anyone else in the world that could do that authentically and with detailed regard to each artist while having such a unique voice -- certainly not in the way Cyro does," Clouser said. "Then, he's excited to learn our rock jazz tunes and come through town for a show. There's no vanity; he hangs with the people he loves."
Clouser promises to deliver a show of energetic creative rock that pulls from jazz as much as it does the music of Baptista's native Brazil. He said the performance will reprise some of the band's Latin America tour, with Baptista playing on A Love Electric tunes and the other musicians backing him on his tunes and numbers by Banquet of the Spirits, the percussionist's band in New York City.
"It's a celebration of discovery and reminds me why I do it," the guitarist said.
Read and listen to more about Todd Clouser here.