Corcovado

"Corcovado" - Stan Getz Getz plays the Jobim melody as if reluctant to disturb the room's stillness, his tenor breathier and rounder than any bebop convention would allow. The bossa nova pulse — brushed drums, muted nylon-string guitar, a bassline that walks in stockinged feet — never rises above conversational volume, and that restraint is the whole point. Where a lesser saxophonist would fill the spaces, Getz lets Corcovado's contours breathe, each phrase trailing off into a warm smear of tone that feels like exhaled smoke. The emotional register is contentment tinged with melancholy: this is happiness observed from a slight distance, the "quiet nights of quiet stars" of the English lyric, love recollected rather than seized. There are no words here, only Getz's horn standing in for the vocal, and its slightly late, behind-the-beat phrasing gives everything a languid, post-midnight intimacy. Culturally this sits at the 1960s crossroads where Brazilian song met American cool jazz and produced something neither could alone — sophisticated but unpretentious, romantic without being saccharine. It is music for a dimmed apartment after guests have left, for the second glass of wine, for the moment when a city outside the window becomes only distant lights. Getz makes ache sound like comfort.