Live Music: Elsa Nilsson & Dani Gurgel + Ellie Pruneau

Elsa Nilsson & Dani Gurgel met for the first time at a Jazzahead jam session which is that kind of loud and busy conference environment where you meet a gazillion people and only keep in touch with a few. No one would have believed their 1 am conversation about Elsa coming to Brazil, staying at Dani’s, and recording at Da Pá Virada was real, it sounded like the kind of check-bouncing pleasantries people exchange on their way out. But when Elsa found herself traveling to South America with her New York based band she joyfully and immediately reached out to Dani to ask if the offer was genuine, and it was so genuine she went twice. Sobre Água literally means both “About Water” and “Over Water”. That’s how Dani described São Paulo to Elsa in her first days in the city. The main avenues are built over dozens of channeled rivers and creeks. When it rains, this concrete-covered underground basin has nowhere to flow but up causing intense and sudden flooding. Elsa, in her way, built this image into a composition for which Dani wrote lyrics — their first musical collaboration. On this first São Paulo adventure Elsa and Dani laid ground for this project. They got to know Seattle bassist Kelsey Mines who was traveling to Brazil at the same time, started developing the project with drummer Thiago Big Rabello, who would also join them as producer and engineer, and sat in with Danilo Silva at his iconic São Paulo gig and jam session, Som das Quartas. Together they explored the musical landscape of São Paulo and formed a friendship and a collaboration which would inspire some of the album originals. A year later, they rejoined at Da Pá Virada Studios as a band. The music on this album is a combination of original collaborative and individual compositions for this group, and some re-imaginings of earlier work. For this concert celebrating the release of their first album Dani, Elsa and Kelsey will be joined by legendary Brazilian pianist Debora Gurgel. Ellie Pruneau is a pianist, composer, and educator based in New York. She specializes in small group instrumentations, including piano trio, quartet, and voice with prepared piano. Her compositional style values the importance of combining many genres including classical, funk, video game, and indie. Pruneau’s compositional work earned her a place at the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead workshop in 2019, and the 2022 Alumni Commission for the Indiana University Jazz Department. She has performed with notable musicians Greg Ward, Ari Hoenig, and John Raymond. Her accompaniment on Amanda Gardier’s album Flyover Country (2019) was described as “percussive and harmonically sophisticated” by Downbeat Magazine.