Amizade. L-R: Javier Fioramonti, Mishka Adams, Guillermo Rozenthuler

Amizade
(Crazy Coqs, 23 July 2017. Review by Sebastian Scotney)

Amizade, a project of Mishka Adams and Guillermo Rozenthuler to unearth and perform songs from all over Latin America is performing its early gigs, yet the accomplishment, the care, the performance experience and energy, the infinitely subtle ways of expressing and being musical and poetic – it’s all there and, in the language of the French brasserie they were at last night – à point. The audience may still be dominated by musician friends, but such is the way of these things 

The name of the band is the Portuguese word for friendship and Rozenthuler’s and Adams’ idea is to celebrate their own musical friendship and to invite other like-minded friends. At Pizza Express in April, the announced guest was percussionist Adriano Adewale. But they also had (as the video below shows) – discreet and unannounced – Javier Fioramonti. He is an Argentinian, a fine player known for his characterful work and wonderful sound on acoustic bass guitar, but, as was mentioned a number of times last night, he turns out to be a “Swiss army knife” of a musician, also offering extremely deft nylon string guitar, a whole array of percussion and extra vocals.

They also had another guest in the second half, Beto Caletti, an Argentinian-born singer-guitarist who is completely at home in Brazilian repertoire – indeed he has that Brazilian way of floating weightlessly through chord changes. His speedy guitar playing was simply jaw-dropping.

Amizade has a delightful repertoire of songs of which Amapola by Jose Luis Guerra with its talking poppies is just one of many. It is an out-and-out romantic song. The couple next to me who had been in rather perfunctory discussion of the drinks menu when they arrived spent that song intertwined and scarcely surfacing for breath.

Brasserie Zedel doesn’t really need recommending as a first-date venue, but Amizade (see Candombe Bailador, below) might just be the band to Tripadvisor it off the scale.