Brazilian creativity comes to the fore

It would be hard to find a more musically compatible pairing than the Brazilian duo of Joyce and Dori Caymmi. Their performance Thursday at the Jazz Bakery was a brilliant display of what Rio’s Joyce (the singer uses only her first name professionally) likes to describe as “MCB” (which translates as “creative music of Brazil”).

The label is an alternative to MPB (popular music of Brazil), a creatively inclusive, post-bossa nova genre prevalent when both Joyce and Caymmi were in the early stages of their careers. What it meant for these two impressive artists was simply a wide-open canvas on which to freely express their musical inventiveness.

And they did so with alacrity. Caymmi’s versions of a pair of classics, Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado” and Ary Barroso’s “Aquarella do Brasil,” took a sharp left turn from their familiar surroundings. Dramatically altering the chord progressions in his guitar accompaniment, Caymmi -- the son of the great Brazilian songwriter Dorival Caymmi -- created a thicket of dark sound beneath his expressive vocals, enhancing the songs with subtle new layers of meaning.

When he played Jobim’s “Samba de Uma Nota So” (One Note Samba) in a similarly austere emotional fashion, he referred to his darkness and Joyce’s cheerfulness. She then responded with a high-speed, buoyantly upbeat version of the same tune, with Caymmi joining in on the tongue-twisting romp through the song’s bridge.

Joyce has recorded frequently with jazz musicians, and everything she did was energized by inherent swing, aided by the empathic support of bassist Rodolfo Stroeter and her husband, drummer Tutty Moreno. Her reading of Jobim’s “Aguas de Marco” simmered with a rhythmic lift and a sense of joy recalling the whimsy of the song’s buoyant recording by Jobim and singer Elis Regina.

Her own “A Banda Maluca” opened even more swinging passages, with Joyce driving her phrases through, around and across the rhythm in a rendering that virtually defined the ineffable linkages between Brazilian music and American jazz. Nights like this, with talent of such magnitude combining forces, don’t come along very often. Fortunately, for those who didn’t make the opening, Joyce and Caymmi will be working their magic at the Bakery through Sunday.

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Joyce with Dori Caymmi

Where: Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City

When: 8 and 9:30 p.m. today and Sunday

Price: $35

Contact: (310) 271-9039