Livre

A seminal figure in Portuguese music, the guitarist Mário Pacheco for many years ran the Clube de Fado in Lisbon and, as an accompanist and composer, has worked with all of the great fadistas from Amália Rodrigues to Mariza. He’s also recorded a string of instrumental albums blending fado tradition with other styles, beginning with 1993’s Um Outro Olhar, considered a landmark in modern Portuguese music.

With Brazil’s Jaques Morelenbaum on cello and the ubiquitous Spanish producer Javier Limón on piano among the supporting cast, his latest release is an elegant and classy exercise in what Pacheco calls ‘instrumental poetry,’ which is not a bad description. Just occasionally his romantic leanings run away with him and he risks descending into coffee table blandness, like an upmarket kind of saccharine world muzak. Yet the album’s best moments are mellifluously sublime, including an updated fado-jazz arrangement of Amália’s classic ‘Porque Voltas, de que Lei’ on which Pacheco’s guitarra is accompanied by saxophone and accordion. Elsewhere ‘Strange Times’ and ‘Conhechimento’ with their string-laden, neo-classical arrangements are no less satisfying.