Jazz Reviews : Teaming of Pisano, Castro-Neves a Rare Offering

Call it a musical love affair between two guitarists, or simply plectrum heaven. By any definition, the team of John Pisano and Oscar Castro-Neves, presented Saturday at Le Cafe in Sherman Oaks, qualifies as a rare example of musical empathy.

Pisano, a New Yorker, came to prominence playing and writing with the Tijuana Brass; Castro-Neves, though born in Rio, studied in L. A. and became a pioneer in the bossa nova movement.

Backed by John Leftwich on electric and upright bass and the Brazilian drummer Claudio Slon, they are intensely rhythmic performers; often while one man is soloing the other will urge him on with relentlessly syncopated figures. Occasionally they will join forces in octave unison, their contrasting sounds complementing one another: Castro-Neves crisp and bright, Pisano gentle and light.

Although both men are gifted composers, during the two sets heard they concentrated on compositions by others--Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Triste” and “Captain Bacardi,” Edu Lobo’s “Casa Forte,” and “The Sea is My Soil” by the veteran Dore Caymmi.

The obvious delight these two find in their too infrequent joint appearances manifested itself in frequent smiles. At one point, perhaps spontaneously, they both began singing the melody wordlessly. One song was a brief, amusing sample of Castro-Neves as a vocalist, applying his crusty tones to “I Got a Way With Women.”

So bright is the interaction in the quartet that even during Leftwich’s bass solos both guitars would find ingeniously contrasted ways of backing him. Pisano and Castro-Neves are incapable of creating a dull moment, but that is an understatement. They are only capable of generating rhythmic, harmonic and melodic joy.