What's Up?
Sandro has produced & played with some of the leading artists today including…
Milton Nascimento, Lenine, Jorge Vercilo, Omar Hakim, Patti Austin, James Ingram, Flora Purim, Maria Gadu, Brenda Russell, Dionne Warwick, Ruben Blades, Victor Bailey, Rita Coolidge, Abraham Laboriel, Jimmy Haslip, Alphonso Johnson, Darryl Jones, Herb Alpert, Bill Charlap, Toninho Horta, Claudio Roditi, Flavio Venturini, Jane Duboc, Renato Russo, Radio Taxi, Buster Williams, Mark Egan, Danny Gottlieb, Russell Ferrante, Kenny Garrett, Fred White, Harvey Mason, Peter Erskine, Antonio Sanchez, Terri Lyne Carrington, Vinnie Colaiuta, Luis Conte, Larry Williams, Bashiri Johnson, Sachal Vasandani, James Francis, Leon Ware, Dr Dre, Group War, Raphael Saadiq, James Ingram, Robben Ford, Joe Diorio, and Jimmy Wyble, among others.
Life & Work
Bio:
Sandro Albert's love affair with music began on the streets of Porto Alegre. At the age of 14, Sandro bought his first guitar from an ice cream vendor who played his instrument to the people walking by. Not long afterwards, a friend began to share his jazz collection with him. Some of his earliest influences were Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, and Brazilian icons Milton Nascimento and Antonio Jobim.
To this day, the sounds and imprints of the busy streets of Porto Alegre can be heard in Sandro's music. Sandro is that rare phenomenon in the jazz world that is as equally gifted as a guitarist as well as composer. For the past half decade, he had dedicated himself solely to his music. The Sandro Albert Quintet has performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Ronnie Scott's, Catalina Bar & Grill, Yoshi's, the Blue Note, among other venues.
Sandro has played, produced and/or recorded with major Brazilian and American artists such as Milton Nascimento, Lenine, Jorge Vercilo, Omar Hakim, Patti Austin, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Brenda Russell, Dionne Warwick, Rita Coolidge, Victor Bailey, Abraham Laboriel, Jimmy Haslip, Alphonso Johnson, Darryl Jones, Herb Alpert, Bill Charlap, Toninho Horta, Claudio Roditi, Buster Williams, Mark Egan, Danny Gottlieb, Russell Ferrante, Kenny Garrett, Fred White, Harvey Mason, Peter Erskine, Antonio Sanchez, Terri Lyne Carrington, Vinnie Colaiuta, Luis Conte, Bashiri Johnson, Leon Ware, War, Raphael Saadiq, James Ingram, and Robben Ford.
In Brazil, Sandro found his magical sense of harmony and melody; in the United States, he defined his masterful improvisational style. Sandro has recently released his fourth album, Vertical on Daywood Drive Records. This new project showcases Sandro's incredible writing talents as well as his solo skills.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).