# Brazilian trumpet virtuoso Claudio Roditi with a warm and lyrical style, has died at 73: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/01/22/brazilian-trumpet-virtuoso-claudio-roditi-with-a-warm-and-lyrical-style-has-died-at-73-videos-photos/
- Published: 2020-01-22T11:43:43+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Claudio Roditi, whose lyrical poise and burnished warmth on trumpet and flugelhorn
helped make him one of the most accomplished jazz musicians from Brazil, died on
Jan. 17 at his home in South Orange, N.J. He was 73.**

His wife, Kristen Park, acknowledged his death yesterday on a GoFundMe page established
to help support his treatment for prostate cancer. “He didn’t like the concept of‘
battling’ or ‘fighting’ cancer,” she wrote. “He accepted it and felt it was more
like something that he was just trying to live with.”

For the musicians in his inner circle — like Cuban-born clarinetist and saxophonist
Paquito D’Rivera, in whose band he played for years — Roditi was singular. “To say
that he was very special is redundant, because everybody loved him so much,” D’Rivera
tells WBGO, speaking by phone. “He was an original without even trying.”

Roditi was celebrated for his fluent musical synthesis of bebop and Brazilian music,
as exemplified by the title of his 1994 album _Jazz Turns Samba. _But he was adept
in an expansive range of settings, from post-bop to Afro-Cuban mambo to symphonic
music. His playing combined a mastery of the modern-jazz trumpet vocabulary — the
dialects of Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan, among others — with the essence of _saudade_,
a distinctly Brazilian expression of melancholic longing.

That mingling of traits can be heard throughout Roditi’s discography as a leader,
spanning more than 35 years. Here is a perfect example, from the 2009 Resonance 
release _Brazilliance X4, _featuring Roditi’s longtime compatriots Helio Alves on
piano, Leonardo Cioglia on bass and Duduka Da Fonseca on drums. (The song is “E 
Nada Mais,” a Brazilian standard, which the band plays as a bossa nova.)

_Brazilliance X4 _earned Roditi a Grammy nomination — his second, including an earlier
nod for _Symphonic Bossa Nova_, featuring Ettore Stratta and the Royal Philharmonic.
He was also part of a Grammy-winning ensemble led by one of his trumpet forbears,
Dizzy Gillespie: the United Nation Orchestra, which scored Best Large Jazz Ensemble
Album for _Live at the Royal Festival Hall._

That recording, from a 1989 concert, was also released on video. Roditi makes a 
strong impression on D’Rivera’s “Samba For Carmen,” which begins at 3:25 in the 
clip below. (Roditi picks up the solo baton from trombonist Slide Hampton at 4:52.)

Claudio Roditi was born on May 28, 1946 in Rio de Janeiro. Because his father worked
in Brazil’s coffee industry, their family moved around the country — spending significant
time in places like Santos, a coastal town near São Paolo, and Varginha, in his 
mother’s home state of Minas Gerais.

“The first instrument I played was the table at our house,” Roditi recalled in a
1996 episode of Marian McPartland’s _Piano Jazz_. “Then I asked my father to get
me a set of bongos, so that was the first instrument I owned.” By age 6 he was taking
piano lessons from his mother’s cousin; a few years later he spotted a trumpet in
a band room in Varginha, and “it was love at first sight.”

Roditi began exploring jazz in his early teenage years, inspired by trumpet heroes
like Gillespie and Miles Davis. After his father’s death, he moved with his family
back to Rio, where he received more formal training from noted saxophonist Aurino
Ferreira.

By the mid-1960s, just as bossa nova was becoming a worldwide phenomenon, Roditi
began to feel restless in Rio. He entered a jazz competition in Vienna, Austria,
in ’66, receiving positive feedback from its distinguished jury, which included 
alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, trombonist J.J. Johnson, and a trumpet hero,
Art Farmer. In short order, Farmer became a mentor, encouraging him to pursue a 
jazz career.

He began this pursuit in 1970 at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, after which
he moved to New York City. He racked up prominent sideman affiliations: with Herbie
Mann, Tito Puente, McCoy Tyner, saxophonist Charlie Rouse, and the German pianist
Klauz Ignatzek, among others.

In D’Rivera’s band, he was originally called upon to play valve trombone — which
he did for a number of years, until he declared that it was interfering with his
trumpet embouchure. “I never believed him,” D’Rivera says, laughing. “I think he
was just too lazy to carry around the two instruments! But I loved the way that 
he played any instrument.”

[[

In fact, Roditi was known for favoring a rotary-valve trumpet, which is more commonly
associated with orchestral settings than jazz. Played with key-controlled rotors
rather than pistons, it’s a less flexible instrument that can produce a rich, full
tone. “He found pleasure in playing the rotary valve, which for jazz music is a 
little more limited,” D’Rivera says. “You cannot play half-valve with a rotary, 
so it’s one effect less that you have with that instrument. But he didn’t seem to
care. He liked the sound of the rotary valve.”

In recent years, Roditi had put renewed focus on his own compositions, featuring
them exclusively on a 2010 Resonance album called Simpatico. Among those tunes is“
Alfitude,” dedicated to the iconic Brazilian composer known as Johnny Alf, and “
A Dream for Kristen,” for his wife, whom he met in Boston during his Berklee years.

News of Roditi’s death circulated on Sunday, just as the music world was absorbing
the loss of saxophonist, composer and NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath. On social media,
artists like trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and bassist Christian McBride observed these
losses as a one-two punch, and a sad day for jazz.

![Claudio Roditi, in an undated photograph taken at the Vienne Jazz Festival in 
France. ](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/202001/
GettyImages-84898621.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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