Rio de Janeiro, BR · choro · instrumental

Hamilton de Holanda

1 upcoming festival

The ten-string bandolim virtuoso who pulled choro into open improvisation without losing its swing.

Hamilton de Holanda was born in Rio de Janeiro and grew up in Brasília, where he started playing the bandolim at five and gave his first performance a year later. With his brother Fernando César he formed the group Dois de Ouro, playing choro in a family group from childhood. He came to wider notice as a player who could hold the repertoire of Jacob do Bandolim and Pixinguinha while treating the melodies as material for extended improvisation.

The instrument he plays is a ten-string bandolim, custom-made and adapted from the standard eight-string mandolin to give himself a wider range. It has become the signature of his sound, letting him move between the close harmonic voicings of choro and lines borrowed from jazz without losing the instrument's percussive attack.

Much of his recorded work is in duo and small-group settings, including sessions with the guitarist Yamandu Costa and the Italian pianist Stefano Bollani, alongside long-running collaborations with Mike Marshall and Joel Nascimento. He has also taught at the Raphael Rabello Choro academy.

He also writes his own pieces, and his arrangements draw on jazz harmony without abandoning the rhythmic phrasing of choro. His work has drawn several Latin Grammy nominations, among them Bossa Negra, made with Diogo Nogueira, and Samba de Chico, nominated for Best Instrumental Album and Best Engineered Album.

His live album Canto de Praya also received a Latin Grammy nomination in the instrumental category, and he was nominated for Producer of the Year. The recording Harmonize was named among the best Brazilian albums of the first half of 2019 by the São Paulo Association of Art Critics.

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choroinstrumental