Téka: Reviews

 

Téka Blends Guitar Skills With Her Velvety Vocals: “… a fine guitarist with a velvety sounding voice… an innate musicality that touched every aspect of her performance. Like João Gilberto, she brought everything into a unified expression, combining her vocal lines and rhythmic guitar accompaniments into a distinct buoyant musical blend.” Los Angeles Times by Don Heckman

Santa Barbara’s Brazilian ambassador: “Brazilian singer-guitarist Téka is one of Santa Barbara’s luminous musical citizens.” Santa Barbara News- Press by Josef Woodard

What’s Shaking? Téka, world –class Brazilian Vocalist/Guitarist at Lunaria and Spazio: “Everything she does sounds so easy and comfortably centered, even though much of it is actually very difficult in terms of chops and focus. For example, the extraordinary guitar playing with which she accompanies her vocals and the easy control she exerts over her beautifully textured, lyrical voice. Her intonation is right on and her time is impeccable; she swings gently and it feels exhilarating to the listener”. L.A. Jazz Scene by Stanley Naftaly

Three women in Jazz at Santa Barbara Victoria Hall: “Téka, concentrating on music of her native Brazil, was simply put, awesome. Having a naturally vivacious stage presence, she had an easy way of evoking the inherent beauty of the samba, handling its irresistible rhythmic flow with style and grace and inflecting its song’s poetic lyrics with just the right nuances, whether performed in English or Portuguese. A well-rounded, polished musician, Téka demonstrates that she is equally adept as a guitarist as she is a singer”. L.A. Jazz Scene by Russell Arthur Roberts

Brazilian Songstress:” Center stage, without making a point of it, Téka showed herself to be in possession of a warm and wonderful voice, refreshingly understated but also confident in its assertions. In addition to a set list of Brazilian tunes, she also served up a slow, sumptuous version of ‘And I love her’ that closed the gap between Beatles-esque and Rio-esque. She lays out melodies and nuances at an unhurried pace. The material is often deceptively simple, swerving to unexpected harmonic places. A good Brazilian vocalist makes eccentricities (by state standards) sound perfectly natural, and excites interest by virtue of both technical grace and subtle improvisatory derring-do. Téka does that and more”. The Independent by Josef Woodard

Oratorio Chorale and Canto General Featuring Contralto Téka Penteriche: “There was a mellow, chanting quality to Téka Penteriche’s singing. She had an effective and subtle simplicity in her approach. In the opening “Agunas Bestias”she alternated wonderful drive with stirring mystery.” Santa Barbara News Press by Hillary Houser

“Téka and Páris provided an engaging sound with a delightful blend of percussion twists. Singing mostly in Portuguese,Téka’s enunciation was exquisite; even those unfamiliar with the language could make out every word. Her incisive rhythm guitar; bassist Páris’fluid, tactful lines; the ferousciously cooperative groove from percussion and drums; and harmonies from a pair of flutes combined to form an ideal backup for her sensual vocals. This group is taking Brazilian music to a new level; they are clearly one of Boston’s best and brightest.” Rhythm Music Monthly by Kyle Russel and Will Rapp

(2008)

JAZZ REVIEW: full article

Teka Blends Guitar Skills With Her Velvety Vocals

By DON HECKMAN, Special to The Los Angeles Times

 "Brazilian singer-guitarist Teka spends most of her time in the Santa Barbara area, making occasional forays into Los Angeles every month or so. When she does, the event is well worth seeking out--she is one of Brazil's most appealing contributions to Southland music. In her Saturday night late set at Spazio in Sherman Oaks, she displayed a range of talents that clearly stamped her as an artist with potential reaching well beyond her local gigs. Start with the fact that she is a fine guitarist with a velvety sounding voice, then add an innate musicality that touched every aspect of her performance. But what made Teka's work even more convincing was the manner in which she joined her instrumental and vocal skills. Like Joao Gilberto, she brought everything into a unified expression, combining her vocal lines and rhythmic guitar accompaniments into a single, elegantly buoyant musical blend. In the case of bossa nova era hits such as "Samba de Uma Nota So" and "O Barquinho," Teka updated the familiar lines with brisk, jazz-oriented backing from bassist Randy Tico, drummer Kevin Winard and trumpeter-keyboardist Jeff Elliott. Her approach to jazz and ballad classics was even more intriguing, investing them with the ineffable spirit of Brazil. Toots Thielemans' jazz classic "Bluesette," for example, was delivered over a simmering, samba-tinged undercurrent of rhythm; the long, floating melody of Kurt Weill's "Speak Low" became--in Teka's arching interpretation--a tune that might easily have surfaced on the sunny beach at Ipanema. Tico's bass playing and Winard's drumming were particularly vital supplements to Teka's singing, empathetically interacting with her subtle shifts of emphasis. Elliott's role was somewhat more enigmatic. Seated at the front of the stage, doing a one-man-band stunt of simultaneously playing trumpet or flugelhorn with one hand and a keyboard instrument with the other, his presence was a frequent distraction. His first-rate brass instrument solos, had they been offered as a less obtrusive, more supportive complement to Teka's performance, would have made for a far more balanced musical presentation".