Core 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 sheet music for the 10 tunes that will make up our Core Repertoire for camp this year. You’ll find video accompaniments to these tunes in a playlist on the Choro Camp youtube channel. The tunes in each collection below are the same: one is in concert C and the others are transposed for Bb and Eb instruments.
To help you make the best use of your preparation time we’ll organize the suggested repertoire into two “tiers”. You can read about and download those tiers separately (a little further down the page), or get all 10 tunes at once right here:
Tier 1 Core Repertoire
Downloadable sheet music for just the Tier 1 tunes here:
- 2023 Core Repertoire — Tier 1 (C)
- 2023 Core Repertoire — Tier 1 (Bb)
- 2023 Core Repertoire — Tier 1 (Eb)
Our “Tier 1” is a selection of 5 tunes to which we are sure to devote intensive study at Choro Camp. All are very 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. Click the name of any tune to hear a performance of it, but we encourage you to listen to several performances. All are easily available online.
- Polca: Flor Amorosa (Callado)
- Choro: Pedacinhos do céu (Waldir Azevedo)
- Choro/Samba: Benzinho (Jacob do Bandolim)
- Maxixe: Brejeiro (Nazareth)
- Baião: Sanfona Sentida (Dominguinhos/Anástacia)
Esmeraldino Salles
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. If learning those first five tunes leaves you with time to spare, try these:
Tier Two Core Repertoire
Downloadable sheet music for just the Tier 2 tunes here:
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: O gato e o canário (Pixinguinha)
- Choro: Arranca Toco (Meira)
- Samba: Caminhando (Nelson Cavaquinho/Nourival Bahia)
- Maxixe: Flamengo (Bonfiglio de Oliveira )
- Baião: Cabaceira Mon Amour (Sivuca)
