Azymuth

Copacabana

Azymuth grew out of the Rio de Janeiro session scene of the 1960s. Keyboardist José Roberto Bertrami, bassist Alex Malheiros and drummer Ivan Conti, known as Mamão, all worked in the city's bossa nova and jazz circles, and lived in the same block in Copacabana when Bertrami asked the other two to play with him. Around 1968 they began backing singers on the Equipe label and playing together as Projeto III. As sidemen they worked for Roberto and Erasmo Carlos, Paulinho da Viola, Edu Lobo, Gal Costa and Vinicius de Moraes, and in 1972 they made several records with Marcos Valle.

In 1973 they recorded the soundtrack to O Fabuloso Fittipaldi, Roberto Farias's documentary about the racing driver Emerson Fittipaldi, with Valle. The producer Armando Pittigliani suggested they take their name from Valle's song Azimuth, and Valle agreed. Malheiros has explained the word as an old Arabic term for a path. The band's own name for its music was samba doido, crazy samba.

Soap operas and Montreux

The debut, Azimüth (Som Livre, 1975), had the percussionist Ariovaldo Contesini as a fourth member and an older spelling of the name, which became Azymuth from the next record. TV Globo's novelas made them known at home: Linha do Horizonte was used in Cuca Legal, and Melô da Cuíca, heard in Pecado Capital, was a national hit single. Águia Não Come Mosca (1977) opened with Vôo Sobre o Horizonte, which played in the novela Locomotivas. Atlantic released the album in Brazil, the United States and Japan at once, and the band played the Montreux Jazz Festival in July 1977. Those two steps led to an American tour and a contract with Milestone.

Jazz Carnival

Light as a Feather (1979), their first Milestone album, was made at Studio Sonoviso in Rio with Toninho Barbosa as engineer. Its long instrumental Jazz Carnival came out as a UK single in December 1979, reached No. 19 in 1980 and was featured on Top of the Pops. Songlines put the album's sales at half a million worldwide. Malheiros recalled that Bertrami's answer to the hit was a rule: never repeat Jazz Carnival, or anything else.

The trio settled in the United States in the early 1980s and made a long run of Milestone albums that never came out in Brazil, from Outubro (1980) and Telecommunication, which Malheiros considers their finest, to Carioca. Conti and Malheiros also made solo albums for the label.

Far Out

Bertrami left at the end of the 1980s and the Milestone contract ended. With Jota Moraes on keyboards the band made Tudo Bem (1989) and Curumim (1990), then split. In the mid-1990s acid-jazz bands such as Jamiroquai and Incognito revived interest in them, and in 1996 Far Out Recordings signed the band and brought Bertrami back. The first Far Out album, Carnival (1996), included a new recording of Jazz Carnival, and Global Communication remixed it the same year. A steady run of Far Out records followed, including Butterfly (2008) and Aurora (2011), the last with Bertrami. He died in July 2012, aged 66, after being hospitalised with liver failure. Conti meanwhile recorded with Madlib as Jackson Conti.

Fifty years

Fernando Moraes played keyboards from 2012 to 2014, and Kiko Continentino, a former pupil of Bertrami, joined in 2015. Fênix (2016), the first album after Bertrami's death, was judged by Bandcamp Daily a match for their 1970s classics. Far Out released the trio's early home rehearsals as Demos (1973-75) in 2019, and in 2020 they made an album with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad for Jazz Is Dead.

The band opened its 50th-anniversary year in February 2023 with two sold-out nights at the Little Club in Rio's Beco das Garrafas. Conti died two months later, aged 76, leaving Malheiros as the only surviving original member and the band's leader. Renato Massa Calmon, who had played with Marcos Valle, Eumir Deodato and Ed Motta, took over the drums, and Marca Passo (2025) marked the anniversary with a tribute to Conti. In 2026 they were still touring Brazil, Asia and Europe, while DJs from Gilles Peterson to Four Tet and Floating Points kept Jazz Carnival in their sets.