Coplas Escondidas: Sofia Rei & Jorge Roeder Speak

Photo by Isabel Roeder.

Vocalist Sofia Rei and bassist Jorge Roeder play music from their debut duo album, Coplas Escondidas, at The Jazz Gallery this Wednesday, October 18. The album is built on their twenty years of playing together, featuring a collection of music they have performed together over that time. We caught up with them to chat about their personal connections with the music, how they chose songs for the album, and recent and upcoming projects. 

The Jazz Gallery: On Wednesday at The Jazz Gallery, you’re playing music from your recent album, Coplas Escondidas. I’d love to hear more about that album.

Sofia Rei: This is an album that's been in the making for almost twenty years. Jorge and I met at the New England Conservatory in 2002 when we were students there. We did one session to get to know each other and play some music, and we really hit it off and started working together in different configurations. 

First, we started a trio with a great percussionist who is based in Boston, Jorge Perez-Albela. That trio started to explore the music of Peru, which is Jorge’s home country. Since then, we've been working together, producing music together, writing music together, arranging music together, and touring in different configurations. On many of those occasions we would play just the two of us as a duo as well, and we developed a whole repertoire of songs that we had a connection with. Some of those songs are from childhood or other times that we cared about, or by composers who we wanted to celebrate who are not typically featured in the Latin American repertoire. 

We started including songs from Argentinean, Peruvian, Brazilian, and American composers in this list of works we wanted to interpret. We’ve had this body of work for a while, but we never got a chance of recording it until the pandemic. We found ourselves at home without any work and with a lot of time in our hands, and we live on each side of Prospect Park. A common friend of ours had developed an app so that musicians could get together without getting together, because we couldn't physically meet to rehearse. So we did that to rehearse, then we went to the studio and recorded these eleven songs that are now part of this record called Coplas Escondidas.

TJG: It seems like your work together has been building towards this album in some ways. It's cool that this has really been at the core of what you've been doing together for the past 20 years.

Jorge Roeder: We've worked together during different kinds of projects that involve larger ensembles, the use of electronics, looping electric instruments, etc., but we've always cherished the acoustic duo—the very bare bones and chamber-esque aspect of only using the voice and the bass. 

To add a little bit to what Sofia was saying, when we moved to the US and started school at NEC, we were two of only three Latin American students in the jazz department. I think we felt an intrinsic duty to let people know that there's more Latin American music than just Jobim and Fania and the All Stars, and it’s amazing. So that was part of why we chose a repertoire that's less known. It’s a little more hidden, as the title may suggest.

TJG: There are a lot of different composers on this album. How did these songs come to you, and how did you decide what to include?

JR: There were several parameters. As you can imagine, there are more songs than the ones that we recorded. We whittled it down through several aspects. One example is that we love playing Brazilian music, and there are several Brazilian songs we play that are fast sambas. But we chose the slower ones, the ones that are not sambas—one that’s a waltz and another one that’s very, very slow.

But both of those songs carried some emotional content for us that was more significant. For me, it was a hard choice not to include the faster, more upbeat ones. We also didn't want to choose too many songs from one country. We wanted to make something that was balanced and representative, and not overcrowd the album.

SR: I'm thinking of songs from the Peruvian repertoire, but especially in the Argentinean repertoire I think we had too many that we really wanted to do. One song we chose, “Gallo Camarón,” is by Chabuca Granda. We thought this song was something important, representative of the project, representative of what we felt, and it's a composer who we wanted to celebrate as well. She's somebody who we’ve felt connected to for a long time. She was a wonderful writer, musician, singer, and poet. 

A song that's very personal for me is “Serenata Para La Tierra De Uno,” an Argentinean song by another woman composer and poet who is very, very important back home. This really brought an emotional connection for me to my land. The literal translation of the song is,  “A Song for One's Homeland.” It's really emotional and it's a very special song that ties me to some of my childhood heroes like Mercedes Sosa—I remember her singing and I remember my childhood. 

For us, in each of these songs there is something that was important and made a connection on an emotional, historical, cultural, or musical level. There’s a song by Pixinguinha that’s a very intricate melody, but it’s also about the fun of playing something that's a perfect composition in a way, and exploring different ways of presenting it. 

We also explored different ways of presenting Thelonious Monk’s song, “Ask Me Now.” That was one of the first standards I learned, although it's pretty complex. It was on a Carmen McRae record that was very important for me. After I listened to it I was like, “One day, I'm going to sing this song, and then one day I'm going to record it.” 

We didn't want to do it as a traditional standard, and we found this different way of playing it while we were learning how to play a very intricate folkloric rhythm from Venezuela that's called merengue. We were trying to make sense of it, and instead we found something else. And we were like, “Okay, this is a keeper.”

TJG: It's really beautiful to hear that this is a deeply personal album for you both. That’s a really special thing to be able to do. Does this music span your many years of working together?

JR: It's interesting because when we were talking about which songs to include or exclude, we talked about the first song we ever played as a duo. As part of Sofia's band's concerts, we would break down to a duo and play this song from Argentina, a chacarera called “Alma del Pueblo.” It almost felt counterintuitive for us not to play it on the album, but as I was saying, we had to choose. I do love that song and I love how we decided to work on it. But we decided that another chacarera, a much harder one called “La Oncena,” fits the repertoire better.

TJG: Do you have other recent or upcoming projects you’d like folks to know about?

JR: Both Sofia and I worked and recorded with John Zorn and the label Tzadik, and currently it is streaming on all the platforms. People can actually go out and listen to that music now on Spotify, Apple Music, and the rest. 

SR: Jorge is also working with several artists that are very active touring and recording right now. You have a new album soon coming out with Julian, right? 

JR: Yes, next March. It's already mixed and mastered, and it will be coming out in early March, I believe. That’s with Julian Lage.

SR: I'm working on a new record that's following my prior album with a bigger band that’s more electronically produced. It’s literally in the other corner of what Coplas Escondidas would be. This is a record of collaborations with other female artists who are either based in Latin America or in the US. It’s exploring a kind of coming together—the intersection between folk music and new technologies and styles. I’ve started recording it, but I am still working on it. I hope it will see the light of day next fall. But that's another project I'm working on right now.

Sofia Rei and Jorge Roeder play The Jazz Gallery on Wednesday, October 18. The group features Sofia Rei on vocals and Jorge Roeder on bass. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. ET. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 Livestream (FREE for members). Purchase tickets here.