Joyce - Natureza (produced, arranged & conducted by Claus Ogerman) '2022

Tracks list

       Not long after the dawn of her career, as a teenager in Rio de Janeiro,
Joyce was declared “one of the greatest singers” by Antonio Carlos
Jobim. Yet despite reputable accolades and the fact that she has since recorded
over thirty acclaimed albums, Joyce never quite achieved the international
recognition of the likes of Jobim, João Gilberto and Sergio Mendes, all of
whom became global stars after releasing with major labels in the US.
There was a moment when it seemed Joyce might be on the cusp of an international
breakthrough. While living in New York, Joyce was approached by the great German
producer Claus Ogerman. Ogerman had already played a pivotal role in the
development and popularisation of Brazilian music in the 1960s, recording with
some of the all-time greats like Jobim and João Gilberto, as well as North
American idols like Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Bill Evans.
"I met him in New York City, in 1977”, recalls Joyce. “I was living
and playing there, and João Palma, Brazilian drummer who used to play with
Jobim, introduced me to Claus. We had an audition, he liked what we were doing
and decided to produce an album with us.”
Featuring fellow Brazilian musicians Mauricio Maestro (who wrote/co-wrote four
of the songs), Nana Vasconcelos and Tutty Moreno, and some of the most in-demand
stateside players including Michael Brecker, Joe Farrell and Buster Williams,
the recordings for Natureza took place at Columbia Studios and Ogerman produced
the album, provided the arrangements and conducted the orchestra.
But mysteriously, Natureza was never released, and what should have been
Joyce’s big moment never happened. As Joyce remembers, “I returned
home, but Claus and I remained in contact, by letters and phone calls. He was
very enthusiastic about the album and tried to hook me up with Michael Franks.
He wanted me to go back to NYC in order to re-record the vocals in English with
new lyrics, which I actually wasn’t too happy about. But then I got
pregnant with my third child and could not leave Brazil. And little by little
our contact became rare, until I lost track of him completely. And that was it.
I never heard from him again."
While Claus was known to be something of an elusive character, the
album’s disappearance might also have been a result of timing. The
Brazilian craze was coming to an end, making way for disco and new wave at the
end of the seventies, and Ogerman struggled to find a major label interested in
a new Brazilian sensation. Additionally, as Joyce mentions, it wasn’t
quite finished. Ogerman wanted to add finishing touches to the mix and to record
alternative English lyrics for the US and international markets - a critical
artistic difference between Joyce and Ogerman.
As the military dictatorship’s grip on Brazil began to subside in the
1980s, Joyce had a handful of hits in her home county, including a tribute to
her daughters ‘Clareana’, and the iconic ‘Feminina’ -
an intergenerational conversation between mother and daughter about what it
means to be a woman. But already a feminist pioneer, these successes were hard
fought. Joyce had caused controversy as a nineteen-year-old when she became the
first in Brazil to sing from the first-person feminine perspective, and the
institutional sexism she faced was worsened by the dictatorship who would often
censor her music. Even once the Junta was out of the way, Joyce found herself up
against the male-dominated major record companies in Brazil, who sought to
dictate her career and sexualise her image, before dropping her for refusing to
play along.
A few years after the success of her albums Feminina and Agua E Luz in Brazil,
Joyce’s music began to find its way to the UK, Europe and Japan, and
“Feminina” and “Aldeia de Ogum” became classics on the
underground jazz-dance scenes of the mid to late-eighties and early-nineties.
The full-length version of “Feminina” from the Natureza sessions was
first heard on a Brazilian Jazz compilation in 1999 and
“Descompassadamente” was licensed for a CD compiling the work of
Claus Ogerman in 2002. Following these, word began to get out about an
unreleased Joyce album with Claus Ogerman and the legend of Natureza grew.
Forty-five years since it was recorded, Natureza finally sees the light of day,
as Joyce intended: with her own Portuguese lyrics and vocals. Featuring the
fabled 11-minute version of ‘Feminina’, as well as the never before
heard ‘Coração Sonhador’ composed and performed by Mauricio
Maestro, Natureza’s release is a landmark in Brazilian music history and
represents a triumphant, if overdue victory for Joyce as an outspoken female
artist who has consistently refused to bow to patriarchal pressure.
***Disclaimer! While “Feminina” and “Descompassadamente'' were
mixed by legendary engineer Al Schmitt and mastered from the original master
tapes, the remaining five tracks are unmixed. Due to significant deterioration
of the master-tapes, the best audio source for these tracks was an unmixed tape
copy Joyce had kept of the recordings. The best care has been taken in the
restoration and mastering of this release, but the sound quality may differ from
other releases on Far Out Recordings. We advise listening to sound clips before
buying where possible.



Tracklist
1. Joyce Moreno – Feminina (11:25)
2. Joyce Moreno – Moreno (04:44)
3. Joyce Moreno & Mauricio Maestro – Coração Sonhador (05:33)
4. Joyce Moreno & Mauricio Maestro – Descompassadamente (04:59)
5. Joyce Moreno & Mauricio Maestro – Mistérios (05:32)
6. Joyce Moreno & Mauricio Maestro – Ciclo Da Vida (08:35)
7. Joyce Moreno – Pega Leve (03:42) 

Related artists