No matter how esteemed and popular a musician might be in their homeland, breaking into the U.S. market often requires an insider to provide connections and open doors.
San Francisco singer Sandy Cressman has played that essential role for the São Paulo mother-and-daughter team of jazz pianist/composer Débora Gurgel and vocalist Dani Gurgel. Working behind the scenes, she’s paved the way for a series of Bay Area performances, introducing their opulently melodic music to new audiences.
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Last February they played several concerts around the region focusing on their book of small-group arrangements for the Débora and Dani Gurgel Quarteto (DDG4). They’re returning this weekend for three concerts, a run anchored by a collaboration Friday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium with the Stanford Jazz Orchestra (which will be live-streamed at music.stanford.edu/sjo_live).
Mike Galisatus, the Stanford Jazz Orchestra’s longtime director, was starting to look for a guest artist for the group’s fall concert when Cressman contacted him about the possibility of working with the Gurgels.
“I knew nothing about them,” he said, but when he heard their brilliant new album “DDG19 Big Band” he was immediately smitten. “Their music is incredible. I also checked them out online and the horn parts alone are incredible, really technically challenging, and the grooves are so great. So far, the Stanford band is doing a great job with them.”
The conductor and arranger of OBA, the orchestra of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Auditório Ibirapuera, and a regular arranger for Orquestra Jazz Sinfônica and Orquestra Jovem Tom Jobim, Débora Gurgel is one of São Paulo’s busiest composers. She’s written songs for leading Brazilian artists such as Chico Pinheiro, Joyce Moreno and Amilton Godoy, and the music she sent to the Stanford Jazz Orchestra would be a heavy lift for a working professional band.
The non-music majors who make up the SJO are used to plunging into deep musical waters. The ensemble partners with illustrious jazz artists every year, and the 20-piece band’s upcoming collaborations at Bing Concert Hall feature vocalists Jamie Davis and Clairdee (Feb. 21, 2025) and trombonist/vocalist Wycliffe Gordon (May 23, 2025).
One requirement is that the guest artists already have a book of big band arrangements. The students embrace the challenge, though the Gurgels’ music is taking them into particularly demanding territory.
“It’s so rhythmically intricate,” Galisatus said. “It’s hard enough for a small group, but then multiple that by 15 horn players trying to put every accent in the right place. The melodic lines, particularly for brass, are very difficult to navigate. Our trumpet players are tackling that right now, trying to make it sound real and authentic.”
Part of what sets the Gurgels’ music apart is the way that Dani’s vocals twist and soar over the ensemble. Only a few of the tunes feature lyrics. Most of the time “I’m scatting and we’re interacting in a way, but I’m still doing the lead melody on most of the songs,” she said on a recent video call with Sandy Cressman.
“I feel like you’re the lead horn,” Cressman said.
“My main inspiration is that I used to be a saxophone player,” Gurgel responded, noting that before she found herself as a singer she played several instruments, including bass and reeds.
While the Gurgels are in the Bay Area, they also perform at the Sound Room in Oakland Nov. 16 with drummer Dillon Vado, bassist David Belove, and (in a lovely parallel) Sandy Cressman and her daughter, trombonist/vocalist Natalie Cressman. The Gurgels also play a Santa Cruz house concert Nov. 17 (email Concerts@InstantHarmony.com for info and tickets).
Cressman, who has collaborated with a bevy of leading Brazilian musicians over the past two decades, was a longtime fan of the Gurgels’ music when she first reached out to them in 2012 looking for Dani’s lyrics for the song “Preto e Branco” (which features music by Portuguese jazz vocalist Sara Serpa). Natalie Cressman had transcribed the piece for her Manhattan School of Music senior recital in 2012.
The Cressmans sent the Gurgels a recording of the performance and a friendship was born. The emails back and forth led to Sandy facilitating the DDG4’s first Bay Area tour in 2013, and when she released her 2015 album “Entre Amigos” Sandy Cressman kicked it off with “Como Eu Quero Cantar,” a brisk and alluring melody she wrote with the Gurgels by “sending iPhone recordings back and forth,” she said.
Natalie Cressman, who recently married her duo partner, Brazilian-born guitarist/composer Ian Faquini, contributed vocals on the DGG19 album track “Dá Licença,” another tune of theirs she performed at her senior recital. This weekend’s concert will reach a new audience “that we’re hoping to build on,” Gurgel said. “This is our third time in the U.S. this year, and hopefully we can come a lot more.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
DANI & DÉBORA GURGEL
With Stanford Jazz Orchestra: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University; $27 (free for Stanford students); events.stanford.edu
Débora and Dani Gurgel Quarteto: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 16; the Sound Room, Oakland; $30; www.soundroom.org
