Repertoire
With some 150 years of history, choro repertoire is already very extensive and still growing. One of the challenges we face at Choro Camp, then, is how to find or create common musical ground. No doubt this will happen in the most organic fashion as it always has—on the fly in actual rodas de choro.
That said, at a typical roda in Brazil or elsewhere the “regulars” have a shared repertoire that makes up much of what will be played whenever they gather. So we’re recommending some repertoire to prepare, to whatever degree possible, in advance.
Below, you’ll find two lists of tunes:
- First, the 10 tunes that will make up our Core Repertoire for camp this year.
- Further down the page, there’s a second selection of Supplementary Repertoire drawn from the Core Repertoire of past Choro Camps.
2024 Core Repertoire
To help you make the best use of your preparation time we’ll organize the Core Repertoire into two “tiers”, as shown below.
Tier 1
Our “Tier 1” is a selection of 5 tunes to which we are sure to devote intensive study at Choro Camp. All are well-known, and relatively accessible. They are organized here as they will be at camp, by the underlying rhythm we’ll use to play them.
- Polca: Paciente (Pixinguinha)
- Choro: Velhos chorões (Luciana Rabello)
- Maxixe: Machucando (Adalberto de Souza)
- Choro sambado: Amoroso (Garoto)
- Choro sambado: Teu beijo (Mário Álvares)
The more familiar you are with these tunes when you get here, the more time you can devote to refining and enjoying your interpretation of them.
Tier 2
If learning those first five tunes leaves you with time to spare, try those in Tier 2, listed below. As you can see, these tunes are organized by the same rhythms as those above, so they will provide us an opportunity to go deeper into each rhythmic style. We may or may not study these tunes as intensively as we will those in Tier 1 – that depends on you! – but they will surely come up in rodas by virtue of being recommended here.
- Polca: Coralina (Adalberto Pimental)
- Choro: Acerta o passo (Pixinguinha)
- Choro: Carícia (Jacob do Bandolim)
- Maxixe: Diplomata (Pixinguinha)
- Choro sambado: O boêmio (Anacleto de Medeiros)
Written Music
Below, you’ll find compilations of sheet music for all these tunes in Concert C, Bb and Eb. If you’d prefer to download just one or a few charts, you’ll find them individually listed on this page.
Thanks to Dominique Gagné and Catherine Bent for these charts! Thanks too to Joel Springer for help with proofing them.
Video Accompaniments
You’ll find play-along video accompaniments to these tunes in this playlist on the Choro Camp youtube channel to facilitate practice. These were prepared by artists who will be on the faculty this year, and to whom we owe our gratitude. So put them to use! To get the most out of them, be sure you know how to slow down YouTube videos—including the “Custom” slow down feature that provides unlimited control over the speed at which the video plays. (Don’t ask us for tech support on that, please. Ask a 15 year-old.)
Supplementary Repertoire
Choro Camp is structured to allow plenty of time for informal rodas, and for that we’ll need a lot more than 10 tunes! Feel free to call any tune you like and see if the folks you are playing happen to with know it. But just to improve our odds of quickly finding common ground, below you’ll find sheet music and video accompaniments for a supplementary collection of tunes drawn from the CCNE Core Repertoire of years past. As always, to learn any of them, seek out recordings on the platform of your choice rather than depending on reading alone.
Charts of Supplementary Repertoire
Supplementary Tunes_compiled_C
Supplementary Tunes_compiled_Bb
SupplementaryTunes_compiled_ Eb
Video Accompaniments of Supplementary Repertoire
Video accompaniments to *most of these tunes can be found in this playlist on the Choro Camp YouTube channel: PLAYLIST
* We did not make video accompaniments for Year 1 of Choro Camp New England, so those tunes will be missing from the playlist. Often, however, you can find accompaniments to the tunes online or through a provider such as ChoroMusic.com.