Photo: Helder Tavares

Virtuosic Brazilian pianist and composer Amaro Freitas conquered our ears a couple of years ago with Sankofa, a sublime album of intricate compositions. We’re over the moon to know he is following it up with a much anticipated new album entitled Y’Y, which is pronounced eey-eh, eey-eh and is a word from the Sateré Mawé dialect, an ancestral indigenous code that means water or river. To bring Y’Y to life, Freitas enlisted a stellar cast of collaborators including Shabaka Hutchings, Brandee Younger, Jeff Parker, Hamid Drake, and Aniel Someillan.

An “homage to the forest, especially the Amazon Forest, and the rivers of Northern Brazil,” as Freitas puts it, Y’Y is “a call to live, feel, respect, and care for nature, recognizing it as our ancestor.” He adds that the album, “is also a warning about the need to be aware of the impact we cause, based on the concepts of civilization and modernity that keep us away from this connection, and its importance for the balance of life on the planet.”

Ahead of the album release on March 1st through Psychic Hotline, Freitas has shared the magnificent, wild and elevating lead single, ‘Encantados’, a song he hopes will make listeners “feel touched by the spirits, the enchanted spirits of the forest.” ‘Encantados’ features Hutchings on flute, Drake on drums, and Someillan on acoustic bass and you can listen to it below.