March’s Album Club on Wednesday 16th March at 8pm GMT will see the 80-year-old Queen of Brazilian Jazz, Flora Purim, join us from her home in Brazil via Zoom to discuss her iconic 1973 LP Butterfly Dreams. This is a special event held in celebration of International Women’s Day.
Influenced by both traditional Brazilian singers and the improvisations of American jazz divas like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Flora Purim was one of the most adventurous singers of the 1970s. After meeting and marrying her husband, percussionist Airto Moreira, in their native Brazil, Purim moved with him to the U.S. in the late ’60s. Though she worked with Stan Getz and pianist Duke Pearson before the decade ended, it wasn’t until joining Chick Corea, Joe Farrell, Stanley Clarke, and Moreira in the original Return To Forever in 1972 that she became well known in the States. Purim showed considerable promise on Forever classics like 500 Miles High and Light As a Feather and lived up to it when she went solo with 1973’s Butterfly Dreams.
In advance of the meeting, Colleen will send out a ‘Musical Lead-Up Playlist’ of 10 songs – music that will set the tone for the deep album listening featuring Flora Purim’s inspirations and other bands in their milieu at that time.
At the meeting, itself, Colleen tells the story behind the album for about 20 minutes and then we listen to the album in its entirety without interruption following our listening guidelines – phones off and no talking. To be clear, its up to you to source whichever copy of the album you can get your hands on – streaming online, CD, vinyl – whatever it is. We don’t broadcast the album over Zoom as you won’t have a great listening experience.
After the album finishes we reconvene and have a discussion about the album and our listening experience.
Patreon Members and higher tiers can attend the Album Club and also our Classic Album Pub Quiz which will be held on Friday, 11th March at 8pm GMT. You can subscribe here and don’t forget you can unsubscribe at any time.
We hope you can join us and thanks for listening!
Our events really resonate with people and one of our newest members sent this testimonial after her first Album Club last month:
“I wanted to thank you for the warm welcome and the knowledge there are friendly like minded people across the world out there and you brought us all together through a shared love of music. That is awesome. I have been mostly alone through the pandemic (am single, live alone – and yes do have the requisite cats to complete the stereotype!😂) My 25 + year career has been in events, currently in the West End of London so in my “normal” life I would be out at least 3/4 times a week. That has all obviously completely stopped for me and it has been a somewhat of a struggle mentally, music has kept me sane and Sunday’s event really helped my sanity. I truly hope to meet you in real life at some point to say thank you in person and look forward to engaging in more events.” – Angela
