NEW YORK 2009
STRAND BOOKSTORE
TODAY AT 6:00 PM JEFF HARRIS PRESENTS THE PIANIST SHOT
It sounds good? Yeah?
Well, let's get started.
I present them to Jeff. Jeff Harris.
- Hello. - Author of the book
that we are going to present tonight.
Well, like many of you,
I read Jeff's article in The New Yorker
about the bossa nova fever in the 50s,
and I liked it so much...
- Thank you so much. - ...that I was left wanting more,
so I asked Jeff for something else.
I encouraged him to write a book about that magical music.
that captivated the world and, above all, many of us
here in the United States.
Well, that was the initial idea. - Yeah...
And it seemed quite simple.
However, the story became complicated, let's put it that way.
- And so much. - And in my opinion, for the better.
Well, I could go on talking,
but I prefer that Jeff tell you everything.
So, without further ado...
Maestro.
Hello. Where do I begin...?
Well, logically, upon receiving Jessica's offer,
I accepted without thinking twice,
above all, because it included
three trips to Rio de Janeiro.
It was a unique opportunity to spend time listening to music,
something I love to do, meet with musicians
and just walk around my favorite city.
- River. - Could not even use
the return ticket and stay there for a while.
Genial.
Well, as soon as my article was published in The New Yorker,
my mailbox started to fill up with packages
of records of all types of music,
not only Brazilian, but from all over the world.
I already take them. Thank you.
There were five days left before I went to Rio,
so I locked myself in the house to catch up and listen to music.
One day,
a piano solo on a recording from the '60s caught my attention.
I consulted the album notes
and I saw a name that until then was unknown to me:
Tenório Junior.
I wanted to know who that guy was,
that pianist I had never heard of.
What else had he done?
What was he doing now?
But apparently he hadn't done anything in 30 years.
I imagined that he would surely have died
like most musicians in the 70s:
due to drugs or a car accident
while on tour.
Ah, here it is!
This one here, please.
The next day, I met up for a drink with my good friend João,
who is one of the people I know who knows the most about Brazilian music,
and I often go to him for help.
He gave me the names of people I could talk to.
and also their phone numbers.
And as he always does,
He brought me discs as a gift.
...from the 60s,
which was discontinued, impossible to find.
I already have this one. By the way, who is this pianist?
I've never heard of him. Who is Tenório Júnior?
Tenório was one of the greatest exponents of samba-jazz
during the bossa nova years.
He was the most jazzy of the Brazilian pianists.
And what happend?
He died, and it's a pretty strange story.
I was in Buenos Aires, playing with Vinícius de Moraes,
when one night, suddenly, he disappeared.
Nobody heard from him again.
And how do you know he's dead?
Well, it happened during the military coup in Argentina.
Were you involved in politics or something like that?
I do not know...
Not that I know.
No. Not that I know of.
I would like to know more about him.
This was the Beco das Garrafas. The bottle alley.
Was this the Beco das Garrafas?
Samba-jazz was born here!
Why did they call him that?
Because so many people came that the neighbors couldn't sleep.
and they started throwing bottles at everyone.
There were only four small clubs.
Some were even whore bars.
There was Bottle's club, and there in front was Little's...
There, see? They were from Alberico Campana,
an Italian immigrant who had no money.
I didn't even know that Portuguese was spoken in Brazil.
-Do not tell me! - Yes, I thought we spoke Spanish.
He could tell you a lot of stories.
- Let's talk to him. - Nothing remains of those times.
It was a golden era that lasted only ten years.
They were all new kids.
The bossa nova movement began timidly.
It didn't catch on immediately.
Only among the same ones who made bossa nova...
but it started to grow and grow...
And there were 60 people inside and 1,000 people outside.
-Mother! - Of 1,000 people, 300 were musicians.
That's why I think it was something historic,
because there was a radical change in the music of that time.
That's all folks!
Ella Fitzgerald sang for four days at the Copacabana Palace,
and for four days he ran out of there without doing an encore to go to Beco.
Everyone who came to Rio de Janeiro stopped by Beco.
It was a wonderful city,
everyone happy, everyone happy... Nothing was happening.
It was a totally strange, completely new thing.
The lyrics were completely new.
The music was completely new.
The way of singing was completely new,
and there was a guitar that no one played like that either.
Music wasn't made like that.
Before and after Chega de saudade , it was something else,
another roll, clearly. That's what happened with Chega de saudade .
I went crazy with all that,
with that poetry...
That's right, Chega de saudade changed my life.
Go away from me, sadness,
and tell her
that without it it cannot be.
tell him in a prayer
for her to return.
After that song, nothing was the same again.
The song was called Chega de saudade, No more blues,
and brought together the holy trinity of the new Brazilian sound:
Joao Gilberto,
the poet Vinícius de Moraes, who wrote the lyrics,
and Antonio Carlos Jobim,
who was in charge of the music and arrangements.
Era 1959,
bossa nova in Brazil and the nouvelle vague in France
They changed the history of music and cinema.
And when the Brazilian musicians arrived in New York
for his legendary concert at Carnegie Hall,
There was no one to stop him.
American musicians went completely crazy
for Brazilian music:
Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn,
Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie
and, when Stan Getz recorded with João Gilberto,
They knocked the Beatles out of first place on the charts.
Even Frank Sinatra recorded two albums with Jobim,
which is not surprising,
since the precursors of bossa nova
They had been members of the Frank Sinatra and Dick Farney fan club in Rio
back in the 50's.
The whole world began to sing and dance to the rhythm of Brazilian music.
There hadn't been anything like it since the rise of mambo in the 1940s.
Everyone talks about the influence of bossa nova
in American music,
but bossa was also influenced
by American music, especially West Coast jazz.
When Elis Regina was asked which singer had influenced her the most,
do you know who said? - No.
- Chet Baker said. -Do not tell me!
By the way, tomorrow they will screen a documentary about Vinícius de Moraes,
produced by his daughter.
It could be interesting.
If you want me to stop crying,
tell time to stop passing.
Time cries my own cry.
Him and me, but both...
so that you are not sad,
What I can do? Singing.
After the disappearance of Tenório,
My father stayed in Buenos Aires for a while.
In fact, he had an Argentine girlfriend at the time.
The penultimate one, just before Gilda.
Another coincidence was that the Buenos Aires counselor
When all this shit happened it was my ex-husband Rodolfo.
My father asked him for help to find Tenório,
but it was impossible.
Has anyone told you about Malena?
Malena? Who is Malena? His wife of hers?
- Well, not exactly. - He was married, right?
He had many children...
Yes, four, and I think they were expecting the fifth,
but he was also in love with Malena.
And why was he arrested? Because they killed him?
Nobody knows it for sure.
Apparently, Malena was not feeling well
and he went to the pharmacy to get some medicine, and that's it.
It just vanished. She left.
He disappeared.
I know her.
Do you want me to call her?
And Malena?
Did you know that Tenório was with another woman when he disappeared?
Yes of course.
Jeff, Gilda was Vinícius' last wife.
Just yesterday I was talking to Jeff about Tenório Junior.
It was a mystery, something very distressing for Vinícius.
It was very rare that a day passed
without Vinícius speaking about Tenório
and of that terrible episode.
He died with that anguish over Tenório's disappearance.
Malena doesn't want to talk about it.
She has been silent for 35 years out of respect for her family
and he's not going to start talking now.
I know some musicians who were friends of his.
If you want, you could try to locate his widow through them.
Well, rather, to his wife.
Since the body was never found,
He did not receive any compensation as a victim of the dictatorship.
He doesn't even receive a pension.
Can you believe it?
Vaya...
- Hello. -Are you still here?
-João? - I just talked to a friend
who knows Tenório's wife, Carmen.
He told me that he lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
He doesn't even have a telephone.
You have to call a public phone booth. You understand me?
"He disappeared under strange circumstances."
"Tortured and murdered."
A few days later, I caught a flight to Tucson to meet with Bud Shank,
one of the great stars of West Coast jazz along with Chet Baker.
He was the first to mix samba and jazz in the mid-50s.
Hola.
On the way home,
Bud told me about those pioneering recordings
with Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida in Los Angeles.
I just arrived in Rio, I met...
I met a lot of people.
It was during the days of the carnival.
I arrived the day it started.
And I didn't know anyone in Rio.
The whole time I was there it was carnival.
There was carnival everywhere.
24 hours a day.
So I couldn't really know
whether Rio was always like this or only during carnival.
It was like being in paradise.
I had never danced in the street in my life.
I had neither done it before nor have I done it again since.
Walking
I went into a club that was right next to my hotel.
I was very impressed by his way of playing.
which was something very refreshing.
With a more contemporary, younger approach.
It was something new and wonderful...
Imagine my amazement
when he told me that that pianist was Tenório Junior.
I don't know if Tenório was his first name or his last name.
I just... Everyone called him Tenório.
As I told you, he spoke English very well.
He was an intellectual.
He could talk about many topics and, above all, about music.
And he was younger than Jobim and that whole group.
I really enjoyed playing with him. We talk a lot about samba.
He even told me that he wanted to take him to the United States.
to play in his band.
...which never happened. Instead, Sérgio Mendes came.
Tenório no.
Sérgio Mendes wanted to be a pop star.
That was evident at the beginning.
Listening to him speak,
At some point I realized I had no idea.
of what happened to Tenório.
I decided to tell him that he had disappeared
and that no one saw him again,
that they never found his body.
I had no idea about all that.
Wow, that's a horrible story.
- Yes. - Tenório...
How strong...
Already. TRUE?
How awful...
I liked him very much, and I liked him as a person.
Why Tenório?
He took me back to the airport, but he didn't speak the entire way.
Two weeks later, I returned to Rio.
I have organized a lot of interviews for you,
the who's who of Brazilian music.
Susana de Moraes also called me.
He wants you to go to dinner tonight.
Apparently, Malena has changed her mind
and now he wants to talk to you.
Small?
Malena, the girl who was with Tenório in Buenos Aires.
You want to talk to her, right?
Dog.
But first we have agreed to meet Ferreira Gullar.
Who is that?
He is a great poet.
He wrote Sujo Poem , Dirty Poem .
He was a close friend of Vinícius and was exiled in Buenos Aires.
when Tenório disappeared.
I could give you a lot of interesting information.
and lives just a couple of minutes from your hotel.
After you drop your bags, we'll go see him. Seem to you?
Yes cool. Come on.
Vinícius always went to Punta del Este.
Then to Mar del Plata and then to Buenos Aires.
During the summer, I lived in an apartment hotel.
One day I went to his apartment
and I heard a conversation with a young woman,
who was Tenório's girlfriend.
And he went in there and said, "Tenorio hasn't come back yet."
She told us that she was not feeling well.
and that Tenório went down to the pharmacy to buy medicine,
He disappeared and did not return.
Then Ferreira Gullar told us something incredible.
When I arrived in Buenos Aires,
A son of mine had a psychological problem and disappeared...
He left home and disappeared.
I was in a state of despair
and I spoke with an Argentinian acquaintance...
A friend of Ferreira told him
who knew a psychic named Haydée.
And then he told me the following:
"Mr. Gullar, I know you don't believe in these things.
But if you want, I can give you his phone number.
to see if she can find her son."
I said, "Okay, give me the phone."
I called her: "I'm so-and-so, a friend of Beltrana.
"I'm calling you because my son has disappeared."
When I told him the name, his tone of voice changed,
A strange voice came out and said...
Ferreira thought his son was dead,
but she assured him that was not the case.
I told her: "But Mrs. Haydée, I am an exile,
I can't call the embassy without them ending up putting me in jail.
If I go to the embassy..."
Ferreira's son had spent two days on the street
until someone saw it.
Since he only spoke Portuguese,
They took him to the Brazilian embassy.
They prepared a place for him to sleep,
waiting for someone to come identify him.
Just as the psychic had said,
The boy was "underground."
So I told this story to Vinícius.
I told him: "Vinícius, if you want, I can call Mrs. Haydée
to locate Tenório Júnior".
I grabbed my agenda and called Mrs. Haydée.
"Mrs. Haydée, I'm Ferreira, the Brazilian."
I said, "I have another problem.
It's this: a Brazilian pianist has disappeared."
Tenório Junior.
Because you had to say the name
to be able to locate the person.
It is a mind-to-mind contact.
Say the name: "Tenório Júnior".
When I said the name, the voice changed again.
Oh really?
At that moment I was scared
that I knew that the girl was there by my side.
Then I said to her: "Mrs. Haydée, what about Tenório?"
I didn't wait until the third day,
and on the second day I called Mrs. Haydée.
When I called and she heard my voice,
Before I could say anything, he shouted in a terrible voice:
"Mr. Ferreira, they have murdered you!
They have massacred him," he told me.
I returned to Vinícius' house to tell him the news.
When I told him what Mrs. Haydée had told me on the phone,
he remained motionless on the couch
and then tears began to fall from her eyes.
And he began to say: "My friend, my friend...".
Vinícius was restless, worried, and I suggested to him:
"Buy this girl a ticket and send her back to Rio de Janeiro."
She was very scared.
I had gone there on a pleasure trip
and suddenly he found himself in a horrible mess.
All these difficulties in finding Tenório,
In my memory, they are mixed with the military coup.
I think that's why nothing was ever known,
because the Argentine dictatorship was not interested
that they accused her of having murdered a musician, a pianist,
and in the most brutal way.
And they never returned the body,
They tried to cover it all up.
That night I went to Susana de Moraes' house
to meet Malena.
During the dinner,
I asked him why he had changed his mind.
and he had decided to talk to me.
He answered:
"Because Tenório was an artist and he didn't deserve to be forgotten."
We were starting a love story
when everything happened.
Nobody knew I was going there.
I couldn't say that I was going with a married man to Punta del Este.
So we decided to run away.
Vinícius had invited him.
Vinícius was doing a summer tour that he always did.
There in Punta del Este it was great,
but he had his mind in the clouds,
for your personal situation.
He had to come back
and resolve a situation that perhaps, unconsciously, you did not want to resolve.
Who are these?
This is him with Azeitona.
And Mutinho, who was the drummer.
They were the ones who played with him on the Vinícius tour.
Olive is murió, but Mutinho lives in São Paulo, like Toquinho.
Vale.
When I arrived in Buenos Aires,
There was a climate of dread in the air;
a place completely besieged.
An emergency situation, like a war.
There were barricades, machine guns all the time...
Wherever you went, it was like that.
You couldn't take two steps without having a machine gun on you.
But he liked to play in Buenos Aires.
I knew a lot of people.
I knew Piazzola.
We went to dinner with Piazzola one night at a restaurant,
but Tenório was not well.
Because for him, someone who had, I think, five children, a wife...
I had a tremendous mess in my head.
We returned from the theater
and Vinícius had prepared a dinner
to celebrate the end of the tour at a restaurant I always went to,
because in the morning we returned to Brazil.
And he told me: "I don't feel like going at all."
So I said, "Okay, let's not go.
Also, my head hurts a little. Go get something next door."
There was a place that sold sandwiches.
"Bring something and we'll stay here."
There, everything is fine. I was waiting for it.
And an hour, two hours passed...
and nothing.
Tenório had gone to the corner and did not return.
Then I started to feel bad, to break out in a cold sweat.
I did not sleep all night...
The next day, we started looking for him.
And then Vinícius told me: "You're going to take the plane."
"I'm not leaving. I'm staying, he's going to show up."
And I stayed there for about three days.
Afterwards, Vinícius put me on a plane.
"You leave and I stay here, trying to find him."
I went to live in Petrópolis.
My mother had a country house and I stayed there.
I spent eight years there.
I was in shock for a long time.
I couldn't speak.
I didn't speak for many months.
And then, little by little, I began to get my life back.
And I started making botanical illustrations,
then to work with plants.
And today, I am a botanical illustrator,
People even know me for my illustrations and everything.
Everything happened very quickly.
It was a short time, four months or so.
It was more of a dream that did not come true.
But I loved watching him play.
He sat down at the piano and the world stopped.
When he played it was like a kind of enchantment.
His music enveloped everything.
Tenório was special...
special.
So I asked Malena
If anyone investigating Tenório's death,
a police officer or a journalist, had ever spoken to her.
Never. Nobody in 30 years.
Hello, do you have something to write down something?
Yes, in the hand.
3, 4, 9...
- 3, 4, 9... - 3, 1, 5...
- 3, 1, 5... - 9, 6, 6 again, 9...
- 6, 6, 9... - It's the public telephone
from the town where Carmen lives.
- OK. - And here's the big news:
João Gilberto has agreed to talk to you tomorrow.
Thirty minutes, but without recording anything.
Now you owe me two dinners!
At least!
Two dinners, sir.
Yeah! Two dinners!
I arrived half an hour early and was walking around.
so as not to arrive too soon
nor, of course, late for my appointment with João Gilberto,
the man Miles Davis said about
which sounded good even reading a newspaper.
I was 17 years old when I first heard João Gilberto playing
I miss that special way.
I thought I had finally understood modernity
and the essence of the history of Brazilian popular music.
It made me read literature in a different way,
see movies differently, feel life differently...
I mean, it changed everything.
I remembered that Tenório was thinking of recording with Caetano
when I returned from Buenos Aires.
I always had great respect for Tenório,
for his musical ability,
the privileged ear for music that he undoubtedly had.
This made me have great respect for him.
I remember a train trip I took with Tenório from São Paulo to Rio.
We spent the whole night talking in the carriage, without sleeping.
I was playing Ela é Carioca
and I had some doubts about the harmony.
He taught me, he explained to me,
He told me the chords,
and I was surprised by that direct contact with music.
After Chico, Gil and Caetano,
solo queba Milton Nascimento
to complete the four giants of the MPB,
Brazilian popular music.
Just when I expected Milton to tell me where he was
when he heard Chega de Saudade for the first time,
He told me a surprising story.
I consider myself a child of cinema.
He told me that when he saw Jules and Jim in the cinema, he got so excited,
who couldn't sleep that night
and wrote three songs
which would later appear on their first album.
I think Truffaut changed a lot of people's lives.
Before I left, I thought I would ask Milton
if you had known or had any relationship
with Tenório Júnior,
and at the mere mention of his name, he became excited.
He was a great musician.
When you arrived at their house, you ended up being part of the family.
He was a family man, with a lot of children,
happy with his children
and that joy that was in the house.
His piano fascinated me.
It is not wise to define Tenório.
He had style, but his sound was different.
When this album came out and arrived at my house,
I couldn't get it off my old record player.
Tenório played on some of the best albums of his time,
but he only recorded one as a leader. It was in March 1964.
He was 23 years old.
A few days later,
a military coup stopped the country's modernization
and launched a dictatorship that would last more than 20 years.
Good afternoon, can I talk to Carmen?
Call Mrs. Carmen!
Mrs. Carmen, phone!
It must be around here.
Carmen led a simple life; she made and sold sweets.
I am still married today.
To be a widow, there would have to be a corpse.
Today is like the day after his disappearance,
nothing was known.
It was my mother who found out on television
that Vinícius's pianist had disappeared
and he came home to tell me.
I was pregnant with my little son.
when Tenório disappeared
and an aunt of Tenório, who was a clairvoyant,
came to my house to see the child
and he said to Tenório's sister:
"The child is beautiful, but the father will not know him."
How did you meet?
I had seen Tenório play during the Little Club days.
I used to go there on Sunday afternoons.
I went to Beco das Garrafas and listened to Embalo a lot .
And we met on the last day of '66.
When they introduced him to me, I said: "Ah, you are the famous Tenório."
We met there, we got married.
With the last salary I received,
I left my job to get married and bought the rings.
And we got married like this,
giving it value,
thinking that everything would turn out well with God's help.
Then after we got married,
The work was not very constant either.
We went through many difficulties, many.
He was very radical, he was not an easy person.
I was meeting someone and I wasn't going,
I stopped playing in the middle of the concert,
He would leave during the break and disappear, things like that.
He was a little crazy, but he was an extremely polite person,
a super sweet person.
The only thing Tenório knew how to do was music.
Examine a photo of Tenório
in which he looked a lot like Bill Evans.
I mentioned it to Carmen and she said yes,
who was one of his favorite musicians.
When Bill Evans was in Brazil,
He did some concerts at the Municipal and we went to see him.
Later, Claudio Piolho brought Bill Evans
to the Fisherman's Bar, in Barra.
And Tenório went too,
I had to go because I loved Bill Evans,
so we went there.
I remember Bill Evans sat next to Tenório and me...
Tenório spoke English very well.
Then, they started talking.
They talked a lot.
...for me, the classic, totally.
Those solos are so beautiful, and it doesn't have to be double bass,
can be anything.
He is simply someone who expresses himself in a melodic and beautiful way.
Then, Carmen began to tell me
the difficulties he had to face
after the disappearance of Tenório.
I tried to put myself in their situation.
Discovering at the same time that Tenório had disappeared
and that he was not alone when it happened...
I thought they never had a chance to argue or fight
or separate or reconcile.
Before I left, Tenório's children came by the house.
I clearly remember his voice,
playing the piano when there was a birthday.
That's what she said, playing the piano on birthdays.
When I think about him, that memory comes to me.
But I don't have any more memories.
I remember the atmosphere in the house more than him specifically.
The atmosphere of the house, the people...
I remember the instruments, those big double basses...
The house was always full, there were always people,
They were always playing in the living room.
I remember the exact day Roberto went to the airport
to pick you up from your trip.
It was Elisa's birthday.
That day, I remember that the house was all decorated.
For a long time, when the doorbell rang,
We hoped it was him.
From 10 to 12 years old, we continue waiting.
Afterwards, we stopped having any hope.
It's impossible now.
Elisa wrote a letter to the president.
I don't remember writing it.
What would it have been like if he hadn't disappeared,
If I had had my father alive to this day?
What would my relationship with him be like, his relationship with his granddaughters?
What would it be like to have a father?
I had a strange feeling at one point,
because I was watching his children play nearby and I thought:
"My God, they are Tenório's grandchildren, of course, whom he never met."
Tenório's story began to interfere with my work
to the point of making me forget the book I was writing.
Luckily, João was in charge of reminding me.
What time is it?
It is the opportunity of your life.
Paulo Moura and João Donato, the two best musicians in Brazil,
recording together. -Yeah!
It's something you don't see every day, especially a gringo like you.
When there are no witnesses, I will give you a kiss.
Hola.
Beautiful.
During lunch,
these two teachers remembered
many stories from the golden age of bossa nova,
from when Donato and João Gilberto, still teenagers,
They arrived in Rio,
Paulo Moura played on Tenório's album,
so I asked him about that.
With Tenório, I learned many things.
He was the best pianist in the city.
At that time Tenório was
one of the important bossa nova musicians.
I miss him a lot.
I wish I was alive.
It was a great loss for our music.
I'm still listening to his musical touch.
It was a very delicate touch.
I spent another week doing interviews for the book.
They cut short a golden era.
The best music in the world was being made in Brazil
and, from one day to the next, they finished her off.
Dictatorship and money, there was no longer a place for innovative music.
They only wanted three-minute songs.
Tenório's death was a kind of metaphor
of the death of Brazilian music.
And he was also a victim of two dictatorships: in Brazil and Argentina.
Who rose to power through military-backed coups
by the government of your country.
That's how it went.
The day before I left, I went to talk to a musician,
a friend from Tenório that Carmen had told me about
and that he had been collecting for years
many of Tenório's compositions for a songbook .
Tenório, he was a gentleman .
He was very shy, he spoke softly.
He appeared like a bolt of lightning in Brazilian music here in Rio.
He went to the Beco das Garrafas.
Played once and recorded.
It was phenomenal.
Even today it is still phenomenal.
If you didn't like something,
was disappearing.
This is how he earned a reputation at the professional level of being a guy
that always disappeared.
This hurt him professionally.
Suddenly,
I realized that those scores
that was on the floor were by Tenório and we were stepping on his compositions.
My God!
These... are from Tenório?
Yes, they are all yours. I don't compose.
Gracias.
Hi Jeff. I'm Jessica. How are you?
I hope the trip went great,
and I'm dying to read what you've written.
Any idea when I'll be able to do it?
Listen, by the way, if you don't have too much jet lag,
there is an incredible Cuban pianist
playing tonight at the Village Vanguard.
But if you're too tired... - I'll be there.
...don't worry because I can always invite
to someone much sexier and more handsome than you. "
Sexier than me? But what are you saying? - Bye bye.
Jessica was dying
because I would tell you news about our book,
but at that moment I couldn't stop talking about Tenório:
his life, his music and his tragic end.
I couldn't stop talking about him.
I've had enough to drink.
Jeff, if you keep this up,
You're going to have a hard time finding your way back home, honey.
Don't worry.
I was already quite drunk when I arrived.
Great!
Fantastic!
Wait, Jessica, I'll be right back.
But where are you going?
Aren't you going to play the piano?
Hello teacher.
Thanks thanks.
Oh, incredible.
Well, sleepyhead, it's time to get up!
Here you have.
Champion's breakfast.
But how good you are. What's that?
I adore you.
Listen, if you don't remember anything from last night, don't worry.
There is nothing to remember.
You spent the whole night...
Mmm, how good...
...talking about a pianist who was murdered.
What was it called?
Who? Ah yes, Tenório.
Tenório, that's it.
I wanted you to tell me about our book and you wouldn't stop talking about...
how to call me. - Tenório, Tenório Júnior.
Yeah, so nothing happened.
Did I try to kiss you?
Listen, it's impossible to seduce someone.
who thinks he's a know-it-all Henry Kissinger.
That? - Basically,
you told me that we were to blame for all the military coups
that there was in the 60s.
When I tried to defend myself,
Saying that I had nothing to do with all that, you refused to listen to me.
So I had no choice but to lie down on the couch.
Oh I see.
Did you know?
That?
I think that's the book you should write.
That?
But I'm already halfway through the other one.
Yes, but all your thoughts and attention are focused
in the history of that man.
I mean, you're possessed.
Trust me, that is the book you have to write, without a doubt.
You're going to love John.
I used to write for The Washington Post.
We published his book last year
and it is his most important work so far.
What you tell me about this pianist is not, in the least, surprising.
They murdered hundreds of thousands of people
during those years in many countries.
As you can imagine,
the vast majority were innocent people
that had nothing to do with
with politics or with any subversion.
In 1954, General Stroessner staged a coup in Paraguay.
That same year there was another coup in Guatemala,
where 60,000 people disappeared during the 36 years that the war lasted.
440 indigenous towns were erased from the map
and more than 200,000 people died.
In El Salvador and Nicaragua,
war and dictatorships
They left more than 150,000 dead.
Ten years later, a military coup ended democracy in Brazil.
In 1971, it was Bolivia's turn.
Two years later, in 1973,
Pinochet's coup ended
with the government of Salvador Allende in Chile.
That same year,
another coup ended a long period of democracy in Uruguay.
In 1976, after the military coup in Argentina,
30,000 people disappeared.
How many atrocities...
That pianist was just one of many who died
during Operation Condor.
At that time, none of this was known. Everything was confidential.
Top secret.
The governments of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay
They held a summit to collaborate
and combat any element considered subversive.
They could be exiles, dissidents,
politicians, military or union or student leaders.
Even the press, the clergy and children.
Nobody understood why someone who had fled his country
He could be killed or disappear into another.
Since Latin America was a hotbed of dictators, no one investigated.
Only years later did Operation Condor come to light.
When? As?
The Curia of Sao Paulo, to help the families of the disappeared,
founded an office called Clamor.
One of the cases they found was that of a Uruguayan woman.
His son and his wife had gone into exile in Buenos Aires.
They were arrested, tortured and murdered.
They had two small children who disappeared.
Vaya.
Grandma wanted to know something about them, if there was any way to find them.
One day, they received a call from Caracas.
A woman claimed to have seen the children in the photo
in a square in Valparaíso.
At first, the story didn't seem very plausible:
two Uruguayan children, missing in Argentina,
seen by a Venezuelan woman
in a Chilean square.
Still, they decided to follow the trail.
Two days later,
Clamor's person returned to school,
this time with the grandmother of the two children.
God, I can't believe it.
It is awful.
Pure evil.
That was the first case that involved three of the countries involved
in Operation Condor.
Since then, there have been countless similar cases.
There are still people trying to find or at least
Find out something about your parents or your children.
All this was done with the approval of the CIA
and the US government.
Already. - Do not be sad,
There have also been exceptions. -Oh really?
There was a young dreamer who,
fed up with our tendency to defend democracy only for our country
and dictatorships in the rest,
He went to Cuba to fight with the revolutionary rebels.
That young man was William Morgan,
He fought in the mountains with the rebels
and became a commander and hero of the revolution.
And what happend with him?
Castro ordered him executed by firing squad.
two years after the triumph of the revolution.
A week later,
I was back in Rio to continue working on the book,
only now the book was about Tenório.
I met my friend João for dinner.
He wanted to show me a historical place.
This is where it all began one afternoon in April 1956.
Jobim worked as an arranger near here, at Continental.
After leaving work,
I used to stop by here to have a beer.
I was sitting at that table.
Vinícius was having a drink
with a friend who knew I was looking for a composer
for his new work and insisted that he meet
to that young man called Jobim.
Vinícius told him that he had written
a version of the Greek myth of Orpheus
set in a Rio favela
and that he was looking for someone who could write the music.
And there will be some money, right?
But how do you say that to the poet?
That, to a poet, is not told.
With the salary he earned,
Jobim could barely make ends meet, so he accepted.
Some days after,
Vinícius went to Jobim's apartment
to listen to some of the first compositions
that he had written.
And thus the happiest couple was born
of Brazilian music.
Vinícius... I would give anything to be able to talk to him.
I have so many questions...
By the way, I have to tell you something about the book.
Yeah?
My relationship with Tenório Júnior began on the beach.
He was quite a character,
a very special person.
Tenório was a clean person.
He was out of this world.
If he had been born in medieval times, he would have been a saint.
He was very "white" as a jazz player,
It happened too quickly and had an ending that didn't belong.
He deserved to stay alive, with us.
The greatest jazz pianist there has been in Brazil without a doubt was Tenório.
The last time I was with Tenório
It was in my studio,
and he told me he was going to give a concert
in Buenos Aires with Toquinho and Vinícius.
I remember that I spoke with him about the situation in Argentina,
that was complicated. I told him: "My God, Tenório.
You need to be careful".
He was wearing black pants, a black shirt,
a huge black beard, and he told me: "No, nothing happens, we are with Vinícius,
We're going to do a concert." I wasn't worried at all.
After Tenório's disappearance,
Someone from Argentina called me and told me:
"Roberto, I come from Buenos Aires.
I was detained there and we met.
He was there." And I said, "Why did they stop you?"
He told me: "I don't know, they grabbed me in the middle of the street
and they questioned me several times. I don't know. "I don't know what I'm doing here."
Tenório interpreted everything very well.
And it caught my attention because of the assertive approach
that he gave to Brazilian music,
using the type of sound that Bill Evans used.
He was an excellent pianist.
Tenório's hand playing the piano was something beautiful,
your hand always in the right place.
He played very well.
I miss.
Look, can I confess something to you?
He is missing, I miss him.
Is here.
Who I really needed to talk to
It was with two survivors of the group that went to Uruguay and Argentina,
Toquinho and Mutinho,
but they were on tour outside of Brazil.
Tenório's last concert before returning was in Buenos Aires,
So instead of waiting for them to come back,
I decided to meet them at the place where the events occurred.
I took advantage of my stay in Buenos Aires
to meet friends of Vinícius and Tenório.
In Buenos Aires,
I interviewed Vinícius' penultimate wife, Marta.
I was a few blocks away
of the places where Tenório had been the night he disappeared.
The police station was a few minutes from the hotel,
and that is where Tenório had passed
the first two nights of his interrogation and torture,
before they transferred him to the ESMA,
the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy.
Thanks to the help of the Secretariat
of Human Rights of the Argentine Nation,
I was able to visit the infamous ESMA.
This was where Tenório spent the last days of his life.
It was in operation throughout the entire period of the dictatorship,
from 1976 to 1983.
Oh, fuck.
Oh my god...
My God...
That's horrible.
Yeah! Bravo!
Tenório was a great accompanist and an excellent soloist.
He was very critical, with a great sense of humor.
We came from a paradise: Punta del Este.
We stayed there for a month.
During that month, he was safe, away from Brazil.
I was going through a personal crisis.
The holidays were over, he had to return to his reality,
but that crisis did not surface for a single day in Punta del Este.
The atmosphere was very tense in Buenos Aires,
There were tanks in the streets.
It was like a bomb that would explode at any moment,
but we had no idea before going there.
The police came in and searched the rooms.
It happened to us twice at the hotel we were staying at.
Tenório was wonderful, he was a wonderful person.
Chevalier, very intelligent, but also very childish.
It had something very very pure,
it was very funny.
We laughed a lot,
and when we played it was wonderful.
He brought another person, Malena, with him.
We knew that Carmen existed.
He had to be happy with both of them.
He played well, he was happy, he was not sad.
I met a friend I met in Punta del Este
and we ate and drank wine.
Then, on the way back, I got a little scared.
I saw that there was a lot of commotion in the street and I was afraid of the police,
as everyone.
I finally got to the hotel and it was a tremendous relief.
At 3 or 3:30 in the morning,
Malena calls me:
"Haven't you seen Tenório?"
Le digo: "No, no".
Then he told me: "He left and hasn't come back.
"He went to buy me a sandwich and he hasn't come back yet."
Then, at 4:30, Azeitona arrived.
At 6 in the morning, more or less,
everyone was in the lobby of the Normandie Hotel.
We were all worried, scared.
A friend of mine, Malena and I
We took a car and went to the morgue,
to the hospital and everywhere.
We asked, but found nothing.
We returned very hopeless, very,
and we returned to Brazil.
For a long time afterward, I was dreaming about Tenório.
When you see a person,
to a relative, to a friend who dies,
you say goodbye to him.
Now, when it disappears, you no longer forget it.
You don't forget it anymore.
Yeah, of course.
I started writing a melody, a song.
It's a beautiful song, but I wrote the melody with...
Mutinho, I found the lyrics.
I looked it up on the Internet.
Mutinho wrote the melody and I wrote the lyrics.
Peter continued on his way,
Boy asked to stay,
Tenório went out alone at night,
disappeared, no one could explain it,
other friends are gone.
Maintain your ideals
between truth and delirium,
some sowed nostalgia in exile,
others will never return.
We have found the letter.
How pretty. This song is beautiful.
I miss this song.
Asking here and there,
I managed to locate the one of Tenório's friends
who had met him the night of the concert.
But when they arrived, Tenório had already left and would not return.
"The show revealed a surprise for many viewers,
the brilliant performance of Tenório Júnior.
The pianist played an exceptional piece
that denoted the most authentic expression of modern Brazilian music".
Tenório never read this review.
Back in Rio, I looked for Tenório's relatives
that they could tell me about their childhood and youth.
We had a neighbor who played in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra
and he was his teacher.
He had that musical gift since he was little.
He respected his father a lot,
but I think he was very close to his mother.
When it all happened, she was devastated.
He had a stroke and became ill.
He didn't stop looking for it,
even through Interpol, but nothing, nothing, nothing.
Until an Argentinian gave an interview to Senhor magazine.
He stayed with him and told him
that Tenório was murdered inside the cell
from a shot in the head.
And in the end, it seemed that they had made a pact:
She died one day and two days later, he.
I often went out with him.
When I played somewhere,
as in the Beco das Garrafas in Copacabana.
He was a person completely disconnected from everyday life,
very disconnected from material things.
He let himself be carried away by his music.
He said: "I know how to play the piano, I don't know how to make money."
He had a very zen way of being,
very Buddhist, without being one.
A person committed to good things,
with the things of nature,
with a very simple life, almost Franciscan.
He did not participate in politics.
He used to say: "What I like is playing the piano, not doing politics."
Tenório and his cousin, Luiz Roberto, were very close.
They studied medicine together until Tenório decided to quit.
and dedicate himself to music.
His father, in a loving way,
Despite being upset that he left his medical career,
Well, I was proud that I was going to be a doctor,
He gave him a piano.
Carmen was the strong person of the couple.
They went through great economic difficulties,
but they always overcame them with good humor.
So, since they were without money,
He told me: "I would like you to assist Carmen with her pregnancy."
And in the case of the last two children,
It was I who brought them into the world.
For me it was very sad,
because her last birth that I attended was
after he disappeared.
One day I was here at home when they called me saying
that there was an Argentine corporal,
Vallejos, in the editorial office of Isto é/Senhor.
Mauricio Díaz asked me to go there.
When he was informing us of everything,
The Brazilian police arrived, they had surrounded the building.
They said: "Don't worry, nothing will happen to you,
but we took the Argentine.
Because he's talking too much."
My brother had no furniture in the house,
so he made cardboard furniture.
Once he wrote to me saying that he had renovated the furniture,
that he had painted them black to change the atmosphere a little.
He really liked yoga.
He was very fond of Hindu philosophy.
He really liked meditation.
He played for himself, he played very well.
Whether there were people listening to him or not, he played.
There was a piano here and a drum set by the door to my room.
I slept with the sound of the drums,
to the point that I can sleep with any noise.
I found out about the case on television.
In the Fantastic program on Sundays they broke the news
that he had disappeared.
I was very worried about my parents.
My father didn't go right away because my mother had a stroke.
and was hospitalized.
So my father waited for her to get better.
He went to Interpol, to the police, but they didn't know anything.
The year he died,
They called my father from TV Manchete
and they told him that there was an Argentine, Vallejos, who wanted to talk.
I always went with my father to these interviews,
but this time he decided not to tell me and went alone.
My mother fell in the house
and they hospitalized her,
and my father did not want to stay there without her.
Then he started to have a series of things.
He died on Thursday and she on Saturday.
When I checked the dates, I discovered that Tenório's parents
They had died just on the tenth anniversary
of the murder of his son.
I worked for an organization, an entity called Clamor.
That's where the first information came
about a Brazilian, the pianist of Vinícius de Moraes,
who had been kidnapped in Argentina.
So I went to Argentina to put a paid ad
in the newspaper La Nación and then I went to the hotel bar.
The corner was full of windows.
There was a restaurant, a cafe and a newsstand next door.
I showed a photo of him to the man,
who remembered: "That's the Brazilian!"
And then he told me that they took him away in a Ford Falcon.
In Argentina, kidnappings usually took place in Ford Falcons.
It was confirmation that he had been kidnapped.
Do you think he was kidnapped by mistake?
It is possible that they confused him with someone else,
but he was arrested by the Argentine political police.
Then it was a political kidnapping.
Ten years later,
A guy named Vallejos explained that,
In reality, Tenório was arrested and murdered
at the Navy Mechanics School, Captain Astiz,
"the angel of Death".
Greenhalgh told me that a young Brazilian filmmaker
I had recorded an interview with Vallejos years ago
while making a short documentary about Tenório.
The process of obtaining testimonials
both the father and Carmen took me a long time.
I had to earn their trust in order to make the film.
The first contact was difficult because he didn't want to talk.
At that time, his wife was sick.
And he was very attentive to her.
He seemed like a very strong person,
but this whole story left him devastated.
He was a man who had served the State,
but when he needed him to help him locate his son,
The State did not help him.
Rolling.
We did not have money.
It took me, I think, something like three months.
in getting him to agree to record the interview.
Ten years later,
I decided to do a screening at the Museum of Image and Sound
of Rio de Janeiro, to remember the disappearance of Tenório.
They told me that there was a person, a foreigner, who was looking for me.
That person was Vallejos.
At that moment a very curious process began.
He would hang up the phone saying, "I'll call you in half an hour."
And I changed phones.
Rogério told Vallejos
that he was interested in recording an interview and Vallejos accepted.
But at the last minute, Vallejos showed up asking for money.
He wanted $2,000 for the interview.
So I told him:
"I have gone into debt, I spent money I didn't have.
I would never pay to interview you,
You have to do the interview no matter what."
I kept in touch with Vallejo and Mauricio Díaz, from Senhor magazine,
He called me a day or two later.
I had decided to do a report
and published a ten-page story plus the cover.
How he died?
Who shot?
While he was in the cell?
Did you witness it?
¡Hola!
During all this time,
There was someone I would have given anything to talk to.
and, although he had been dead for 30 years, it was as if he still had something to say.
I have not seen it yet,
but it seems that the interview
It was done in Vinícius's apartment on the morning of the coup.
- OK. - That's why it was never broadcast.
- OK. - It is in 16 millimeters
and only one copy exists. - Brilliant.
Well, we all have a lot of concern
because it is a very mysterious disappearance.
We leave the theater
and then I guess, as I usually did,
He went out to eat something, a sandwich, and never came back.
Tomorrow night it will be one week.
Nothing at all, it was totally apolitical.
He was a musician, he only cared about music.
He led a life as a musician.
For me it is a very painful moment,
not only because he was my friend,
but also because he was an extraordinary musician,
a human being of the best quality,
an incredibly sweet man,
with great serenity, incapable of harming anyone.
And for all those reasons,
his mysterious disappearance
It leaves us in a state of great anguish.
We are all attentive to any phone call.
I have practically not left the house for this reason.
All that remained of Tenório were
fragments scattered in the memory of a handful of people.
I'll never know if he went out for a sandwich,
medications or cigarettes
when he disappeared.
But when people talked about him,
there were certain things
that were repeated over and over again:
He was funny, smart,
pure, shy, ironic.
Among Tenório's papers,
I found a score dedicated to his favorite Brazilian pianist.
It's called Viva Donato .
I think it's you.
There is only one Donato.
After so many atrocities,
I had almost forgotten that Tenório was,
above all, a fabulous pianist.
But also a friend,
but whom I will never know
and with whom I will never be able to talk about music over a beer.
No one can do it justice.
I hope this book saves you,
at least momentarily,
forgetfulness.
Gracias.