Amaro Freitas

Based in Recife in northeastern Brazil, Amaro Freitas develops a body of work as a pianist and composer that links contemporary jazz with the popular rhythms of his region. Initially trained in evangelical churches and later at the Conservatório Pernambucano de Música, he has built a musical language centered on solo piano or piano trio formats, where frevo, maracatu, baião and Afro-Brazilian musics combine with a harmonic approach nourished by modern jazz. His debut album, Sangue Negro (2016), laid the foundations of this highly rhythmic aesthetic, continued by Rasif (2018) and Sankofa (2021), released on the London label Far Out Recordings and recorded with a core group of musicians from the Recife scene. On Sankofa he notably invited saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, underscoring the openness of his work to dialogue with the international jazz scene. Active at many festivals in South America and Europe, Amaro Freitas pursues research focused on the memory of Brazil’s Black population, on improvisation and on the exploration of complex meters within the piano–bass–drums format.