SAUDADE DO PAULO Album by Carlos Malta & Cliff Korman Submitted for Latin Grammy

SAUDADE DO PAULO, an album by saxophonist and flutist Carlos Malta and pianist Cliff Korman, has been submitted for Latin Grammy consideration in the categories of Album of the Year and Best Latin Jazz/Jazz Album. Released on Biscoito Fino, the recording draws on the repertoire of Brazilian instrumentalist, composer and arranger Paulo Moura, who died in 2010 after a career spanning nearly 60 years.

Beyond the duo's precision-tuned rapport, the album's freshness springs from original arrangements and consistently provocative approaches (Tarik de Sousa)

Photo Credit: Foto Vinícius Giffoni

Repertoire

GUADALOUPE (Paulo Moura)

TARDE DE CHUVA (Paulo Moura)

FIBRA (Eloir Moraes and Paulo Moura)

TEMPOS FELIZES (Paulo Moura)

LAVADEIRA'S BLUES (Paulo Moura)

LINDA (Paulo Moura)

SAUDADE DO PAULO (Cliff Korman)

MULATAS ETC. E TAL (Paulo Moura)

Carlos Malta (soprano sax, bass flute)

Cliff Korman (piano)

Recorded at Estúdio Biscoito Fino in July 2025

Mixing and mastering: Diego do Valle

About the Project

The album 'Saudade do Paulo', brings together Carlos Malta (soprano sax/bass flute) and Cliff Korman (piano) to explore the work of instrumentalist, composer, arranger and saxophonist Paulo Moura (1932-2010)

Over his almost 60 year career as arranger, instrumentalist, improvisor and bandleader, Paulo Moura had tremendous impact on the sound of Brazilian popular music, exploring and joining the genres of samba, choro, bossa-nova, gafieira, and jazz to create innovative and dynamic worlds of sound. His recorded legacy includes participations on Cannonball Adderley and the Bossa Rio Sextet, Edison Machado é Samba Novo, Milton Nascimento's Milagre dos Peixes, and his own projects Hepteto: Mensagem, Gafieira Etc. e tal, and the seminal Confusão Urbana, Suburbana e Rural. His worldwide performances include the famous 1962 concert Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall and 1977 FESTAC (Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture) in Lagos, Nigeria.

In homage and celebration, Carlos and Cliff, profound connoisseurs of Paulo Moura's work, took on the challenge of reinterpreting his original compositions.

With arrangements for soprano saxophone and piano, recorded live at the Biscoito Fino studio in Rio de Janeiro, Saudade do Paulo is the first collection of music composed exclusively by Paulo Moura. In addition to these original compositions, the album also features the title track, composed by Cliff Korman, written for his friend and partner and previously recorded as a duet with Moura on the album 'Mood Ingênuo', and by Cliff's trio on his album 'Urban Tracks'.

Cliff comments that: 'Carlos and I have a relationship very similar to the one I had with Paulo Moura, an icon of Brazilian music. A part of the history of composer Paulo Moura is on this album, enveloped in an atmosphere that is both jazz and chamber music,'

Carlos Malta and Cliff Korman knew Paulo Moura for years. Korman's relationship with the saxophonist began in 1981, as a student, during a summer course at the Creative Music Studio in New York, at which Paulo was a visiting artist. Over the next decades, the two became friends and musical partners. The partnership generated several projects, including live performances and recordings, such as Mood Ingênuo: Pixinguinha Meets Duke Ellington; Gafieira Dance Brasil; and Para Cá e Pra Lá: Paulo Moura Trilha Jobim e Gershwin.

Paulo Moura's magnetic stage presence, wielding his golden soprano saxophone and always innovating in his instrumentations, captivated the young Carlos Malta and encouraged him to become a student of the master at the Villa Lobos Institute in 1976. For Malta, as interesting as the classes were, so was the camaraderie outside the classroom, in conversations about music over beer. 'My strongest memory of Paulo is of some events that took place at the Teatro Opinião on Mondays, a kind of uninhibited samba that was going on there. I must have been about 15 or 16 years old, I was starting to play the flute. Paulo arrived all in white, he seemed to be on a cloud, always. There was an instant musical connection: we became friends and then partners,' says Carlos Malta.

The importance of Carlos Malta and Cliff Korman's project interpreting Paulo Moura's work lies in the appreciation, experimentation, and dissemination of what is one of the most relevant legacies of Brazilian music, conducted by two great musicians and educators.

About Carlos Malta

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960, Carlos Malta is a multi-instrumentalist specializing in wind instruments, an arranger, composer, and educator. Known as the 'Sculptor of the Wind,' he celebrates 50 years of career as a leading figure in the world of wind instruments in Brazil and around the world, mastering the entire family of saxophones and flutes. Active since 1977, in various projects and formations, from solo to orchestral sound, Malta translates the soul of Brazilian music through his breath. For 12 years he was part of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo (1981 to 1993), released 30 solo albums, and collaborated on hundreds of projects with artists including Edu Lobo, Gilberto Gil, Ivan Lins, Gal Costa, Dave Matthews Band, Chucho Valdés, Bobby McFerrin, and Caetano Veloso, building a career marked by originality and Brazilianness. In 1994 he created the innovative Brazilian instrumental music groups: Coreto Urbano (brass and percussion) and Pife Muderno (folkloric flutes and percussion), which has been active for three decades.

About Cliff Korman

American pianist, composer, arranger, and researcher Cliff Korman studied in New York City, his hometown, with jazz masters such as Roland Hanna, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, and David Liebman. In his 50-year career, he has performed as bandleader at numerous international jazz festivals and clubs, alongside names like Toninho Horta, Milton Nascimento, Leny Andrade, Astrud Gilberto, Carlos Malta, Henrique Cazes, Nelson Faria, Ricardo Silveira, and Maurício Einhorn, and in four-hand performances with pianists Wagner Tiso, Gilson Peranzzetta, and Cristovão Bastos. Among his original recordings are Mood Ingênuo: Pixinguinha Meets Duke Ellington and Gafieira Dance Brasil with Paulo Moura, Migrations (inspired by the photography of Sebastião Salgado); Trains of Thought (a series of improvisations for solo piano); Brasilified; Bossas and Ballads: Cliff Korman Piano Solo, and Urban Tracks. With a doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music and a master's degree from the City College of New York, Korman teaches courses in Popular Music Studies and Improvisation at UNIRIO, and coordinates the CNPq research group Improvisa and the project 'Elaboration and Investigation of the Paulo Moura Archive.'

Saudade do Paulo/Missing Paulo

An appreciation by Halina Grynberg, Paulo's wife

Fifteen years since that month of July when you left us to make the sound of the stars dance. There we were… Cliff Korman, and the refined touch of his cosmopolitan piano beyond frontiers, revisiting your arrangements in his own language, Carlos Malta in search of a sonic storm on the soprano sax, moving inward and beyond you, and I, embracing the silence so characteristic of you, the foundation of this recreation in an act of longing. A ritual of trans-generational musical transmission. Poignant, intense, audacious. There were four of us - with your absence filling the silence from which the sound arose. And you enveloped us in your blue-tinged gaze, as if you were always walking on clouds, slightly detached and distracted. Yet today there was no lament or melancholy. Only gratitude and joy. We remembered and laughed together envisioning your boyish smile, now eternal.

Paulo, my dear, I needed to whisper this in your ear, between sighs. Nunca vi nada igual…I've never seen anything like it,' you would say.

The album was recorded at Estudio Biscoito Fino, with mixing and mastering by Diego do Valle. Its repertoire includes Moura compositions such as GUADALOUPE, TARDE DE CHUVA and MULATAS ETC. E TAL, alongside the title track SAUDADE DO PAULO, written by Korman.

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