Make a poet a diplomat and good may come of it. France sent the great humanist writer Paul Claudel to Brazil during World War I, and food found its way from South America to France during a period of privation. So too did Brazilian music, once the war was won.
Make a composer a diplomat and cultures tend to merge. Claudel brought Darius Milhaud to Rio in 1917 as his secretary, and there this restlessly multi-stylistic Parisian composer befriended his Brazilian contemporary, Heitor Villa-Lobos. The latter quickly turned Francophile. The former became besotted by Brazilian music. Together, they created a hybrid Brazilian music, filtered through a French sensibility, that instantly captivated the world.
It still does. On Friday night, saxophonist Branford Marsalis brought his Marsalis Brasilianos express -- a Milhaud/Villa-Lobos program with a So Paulo chamber orchestra, Philarmonia Brasileira, touring the States this month -- to UCLA's Royce Hall.
The occasion was the 50th anniversary next year (but this season) of Villa-Lobos' death. But Milhaud, one of the first classical composers to write a jazz-inspired masterpiece, seemed just as much inspiration to a jazz musician who is also at home performing with orchestras in concert halls.
