Composed by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, Anthony Rossomondo, and Lady Gaga, this song is from the soundtrack to the film A Star is Born, in which Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga performed it as a duet.
 
This version features Josefina Moehn-Aguayo performing the lead female vocal, in an arrangement by Frederick Moehn, who sings the male vocal and plays the guitar.

Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin (Patrick Egan) performed the concertina solo.

Shallow, Josefina Moehn-Aguayo w/ Frederick Moehn

One of the students in Embauba Ensemble wanted to perform this classic samba by the great Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque, so I recorded it with my home studio equipment (voice and guitar), with the remaining instruments being electronic, from GarageBand. (Here too there is space in the middle for a potential student solo.)

A Rita, short version (C.B. de Holanda)

The lyrics are a poem from Brazilian Cecilia Meireles that I set to music. It started out mostly as bossa-nova but took a pop-ish turn as I experimented with soft instruments in the iPad. I recorded the voice and guitar in my home studio and everything else is from the iPad. (I left space in the middle for a potential instrumental solo to be added later.) The recording served as a guide for one of the student singers in Embauba Ensemble, Jocelyn Coates, who took on the vocal part in that group. The poem is written from a female-gendered perspective (as indicated by the adjective "sozinha") and I do not alter it in my rendering.

Lua adversa (F. Moehn to a poem by C. Meireles)

This is a song by the Portuguese artist Antonio Zambujo, whose work draws profoundly on fado, but also moves beyond the traditional format for the genre. This recording is from a rehearsal of Embauba Lab one evening in my office at King's College London, with Master's ethnomusicology student Brita Lemmens singing. It was informal, with no attempt at perfection; rather, we simply wanted a record of the experience.

Fortuna (A. Zambujo), Brita Lemmens

An ironic, bluesy on-the-road kind of song perhaps inspired a little by early Tom Waits that I decided to record (voice, guitar) while in Rio de Janeiro on research in July 2017. With the participation of percussionist Marcos Suzano (featured in my book Contemporary Carioca), Ophicleide player Everson Moraes, and Rodrigo Campello (production and bass guitar), the aim main of this project was to see what would happen when mixing a folksy and bluesy American sound with the Brazilian musical sensibility (not to mention the antiquated Ophicleide, on which Moraes sought to make subtle references to choro legend Pixinguinha). We're still working that out ... This is just a reference mix; additional instruments to be added and a proper production mix to be completed in the coming weeks. (It is a song I composed in my singer-songwriter days, before becoming an ethnomusicologist.)

Waltzing Romance (pre-production mix down)

It is an ironic, bluesy on-the-road kind of song perhaps inspired a little by early Tom Waits that I decided to record (voice, guitar) while in Rio de Janeiro on research in July 2017. With the participation of percussionist Marcos Suzano (featured in my book Contemporary Carioca), Ophicleide player Everson Moraes, and Rodrigo Campello (production and bass guitar), the main aim of this project was to see what would happen when mixing a folksy and bluesy American sound with the Brazilian musical sensibility (not to mention the antiquated Ophicleide, on which Moraes sought to make subtle references to choro legend Pixinguinha).

It is a song I composed many years ago with lyrics that depict a somewhat self-absorbed figure who pretends to have all the agency in a relationship, a kind of roaming troubadour type (I was listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde era, if I recall correctly). It's worthwhile asking how these lyrics sound today if we think of the subject singing them as a woman?

Waltzing Romance

Caetano Veloso's beautiful song, just practicing it on a Saturday night with a microphone on.

Coração Vagabundo

Ethnomusicologist and musician with a love of Brazilian music, jazz, and many other kinds of sounds.

Frederick Moehn

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