Choro Ensemble

There is a time machine located in a New York bar powered by a clarinet, a couple of guitars, a small hand drum, and the idiosyncratic sound of a playful, four-string offspring of the guitar called the cavaquinho (pronounced: kah-vah-KEEN-yo). When played in this configuration with just the right soul, listeners are transported to 1930s Brazil, when for the first time ever—thanks to the emergence of broadcast radio—a single genre was being listened to by the notoriously diverse nation. That genre was choro (pronounced: SHO-ro), a sweet style of music that originated in Rio de Janeiro and which has been compared to a tropical Dixieland.