George Klabin’s tribute to his all-time favorite album, Milton Nascimento’s Courage.
Producer’s Review: Eddie Daniels’ To Milton With Love is a rare, behind-the-scenes story of of how this amazing album came to life, fulfilling a decades-long dream.
As fans, we all have our favorite Brazilian music albums.
How long would your list be? Brazilian jazz, Bossa Nova, those classic MPB and Samba records? And if you’re like me, each one on your list carries a memory, indelibly connected to the music, the album cover, the liner notes. The mere thought brings that connection to life.
I’ll bet that you’re thinking about one of your favorite Brazilian albums right now.
But what if it was just onealbum? The most important one.
That thought was racing through my head earlier this year as I was listening to Resonance Record’s George Klabin tell me about a recording project that was very obviously near and dear to his heart. A Brazilian jazz tribute album like none other. It would be for his all-time, number one, most favorite album. And George was producing it.
Meet George Klabin, Producer of To Milton With Love
Half Brazilian, George Klabin is a Grammy-winning label owner who has produced and released many Jazz and Brazilian jazz albums.
Klabin learned his trade in New York by offering to record live jazz shows. He compensated the artists with copies of the tapes. He would broadcast those recordings during his radio program on Columbia College’s WKCR.
Each opportunity was a learning experience. Over time, George Klabin discovered that he had a knack for creating great recordings. And hearing them.
A chance meeting with Milton Nascimento in 1969 was how Klabin first learned about Courage. It proved to be the album that would become his singular favorite.
“It’s true,” says Klabin. “That meeting with Milton Nascimento started it. But then Flora Purim, whose husband Airto played on the recording at the studio in New Jersey, brought me some rough partial mixes. And even though they were not yet completed I was stunned by the originality of the melodies. So, like thousands of fans, I purchased the album when it came out, and Courage is still my favorite recording of music.”
Fifty-six years later, George Klabin’s realization is Eddie Daniels’s To Milton With Love on his Resonance Records label.
It marks Daniels’s third tribute to Brazil’s great songwriters, each produced by Klabin. 2018’s Heart of Brazil: A Tribute to Egberto Gismonti was Grammy nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album. Night Kisses: A Tribute To Ivan Lins, featuring Dave Grusin and Bob James followed two years later.
But To Milton With Love is more than a tribute album. Klabin’s vision for this cherished recording provides a rare opportunity to appreciate his relationship with the music. Both as a fan and as a producer.
With that in mind, I caught up with George Klabin to help us understand what that means. Here’s our conversation.
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The Producer’s Role: Guiding Eddie Daniels’s To Milton With Love
George, Brazilian jazz is nurtured by dedicated producers like yourself. But few of us understand the producer’s creative process. What do you do as a producer? Is there a process you follow?
As the producer, I have to create the concept of the recording. These choices are essential to the final production, they comes from my imagination and suggestions, which in my case are based on decades of experience.
The producer usually chooses the songs in cooperation with the featured artist so the producer must know the songs, in order to choose which ones fit the concept.
That wasn’t the case with our tribute album, To Milton With Love, as we decided to include all of the songs from the original release of Courage plus a new, original tribute song, ‘For Milton’.
Besides song choice, the process fleshes out the overall concept which can even be an album title that describes the desired end result, plus musician and arranger choices to fit the size of the recording band and the instrumentation.
Eddie Daniels, bassist Kevin Axt, pianist/arranger Josh Nelson, and arranger Kuno Schmidt. You’ve worked with these talented people before. Is it as simple as choosing the right musicians and arrangers?
Well, each of these talented musicians and arrangers appear on my tributes for Gismonti and Lins. Choosing the best arrangers for the concept, and the musicians, is the single most important issue. The producer must know enough of the style and abilities of each player to create a harmonious result. The engineer and studio are also important, but any experienced producer will know where to go and who to choose as far as recording studios.
The Producer’s Vision: George Klabin on Eddie Daniels and To Milton With Love
You’ve mentioned that Courage is your favorite album. How did you approach the reimagining of this legendary record? Did your initial vision change as the project evolved? And as its producer, how would you compare To Milton With Love to Creed Taylor’s Courage?
My initial vision stayed unchanged: I wanted to do an instrumental version of these songs, and I was not at all trying to recreate any portion of the original release. I wanted my album to be a loving tribute to Milton and that record, always respecting and celebrating the melodies and harmonies that he created on the original album from 1969.
My idea was to create new and different examples of the same songs and also to choose a very brilliant multi instrumentalist, Eddie Daniels, so we would have many choices about which instrument – tenor, or alto sax, or clarinet, or flute – would be best for a particular song.
Tell me about your admiration of Eddie Daniels’ talent. What is it about this reedman that makes him your choice for the Brazilian Jazz projects he’s recorded with your label?
To me, Eddie Daniels is the best reed player (clarinet and sax) I have worked with and has a huge experience in jazz. He is very demanding of himself to always attain the best musical results from his playing.
Finally, if you had to pick a favorite song from To Milton With Love, which one would it be, and why?
‘Outubro’ (October). It’s just such an amazingly moving melody, for me.
Follow Eddie Daniels’ To Milton With Love
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Producer’s Review: Eddie Daniels’ To Milton With Love
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