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SEASON ONE: A season with the sorceror
Season 1 Prologue: "A Season with the Sorcerer: The Short Fiction of Machado de Assis" (12/10/19)
This first season of The Cariorker is dedicated to the contos (short stories) of "the Bruxo of Cosme Velho," Machado de Assis. This prologue is a discussion of the discovery you're about to make...of the greatest writer you (probably) never knew.
Season 1 Episode 1: "The Card Reader" (12/10/19)
A young Rio man in love consults a card reader against his better judgement. What is finally revealed to him comes as a shock not only to his own notions of belief, but, perhaps, yours as well.
Season 1 Episode 2: "The Mirror" (12/10/19)
Beneath a full moon over the hills of Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro, a gentleman fascinates his erudite friends by recounting a terrifying event in his life, leading him to the belief that every person alive has not one, but two souls.
Season 1 Episode 3: "Midnight Mass" (12/24/19)
The storyteller recounts a Christmas Eve he spent alone with a Rio housewife when he was seventeen. With the distance of time and maturity, he still struggles to come to terms with a conversation he had with her as his younger self, when he found her perplexing, enigmatic, yet unexpectedly beautiful.
Season 1 Episode 4: "A Pair of Arms" (1/7/20)
The young wife of a legal solicitor in Lapa realizes that her husband's 15 year-old live-in page has fallen in love with her, because she always leaves her bare arms exposed at home in front of the inexperienced youngster against social customs. Often considered an erotic modulation to the scenario of "Midnight Mass," (S1,Ep3).
Season 1 Episode 5: "Chapter of the Hats" (1/21/20)
When a young wife demands that her husband stop wearing a hat beneath his station, his humiliating refusal causes her to rebel on the town with a more promiscuous married girlfriend. Chiquinha Gonzaga's "Saudade" in a new interpretation for this episode is played by classical pianist Louis Page.
Season 1 Episode 6: "The Case of the Rod" (2/4/20)
A young seminarian escapes a monastery, seeking protection from his father’s retribution while at the home of his godfather’s sweetheart. Over the course of a harrowing afternoon, it becomes clear through Machado's extraordinary storytelling who the soul of the young man really belongs to.
Season 1 Episode 7: "The Wallet" (2/18/20)
When the young lawyer, Honório, finds a wallet full of money on Assembly Street in Rio, we accompany him through the interior of Rio during his own interior struggle of conscience.
Season 1 Episode 8: "Adam and Eve" (3/3/20)
In observance of the Lenten season, this is the first of three stories on Biblical and ecclesiastic themes, all of an unmistakably "Machadian" bent.
On this rare excursion to Bahia, far from the city limits of his own beloved Rio, Machado beams us all down to a dinner table conversation in the verdant 18th century northeast when Cana (sugar) was the "fruit" of note in the Brazilian paradise.
Season 1 Episode 9: "The Church of the Devil" (3/17/20)
In this second of a triptych of stories on Biblical and ecclesiastic themes for the Lenten season, we join the Devil on his mission to start his own Church on earth. Based on an old Benedictine manuscript Machado's story takes us from Hell to Heaven, to Earth, around the globe, and back again on a pendulum ride between Good and Evil.
Season 1 Episode 10: "Among Saints" (3/31/20)
The perfect conclusion to The Cariorker's 2020 Lenten triptych of stories leading up to Easter. Machado has set this tale of redemption and resurrection in one of Rio de Janeiro's most historic churches. Love transforms, but sometimes in the strangest of ways.
Season 1 Episode 11: "Canary on the Brain" (4/14/20)
Macedo is an ornithologist (a scientist in the study of birds) who stumbles, literally, one day into a gloomy junk shop to discover a canary in a dilapidated cage. Amid the flotsam and jetsum on a sea of junk, he sees the canary as a ray of sunlight playing in the darkness. When he discovers other extraordinary avian properties, he immediately purchases the bird and is stricken with Canary on the Brain. "Tico-Tico no Fubá" for this episode is played by jazz pianist Carlo Penza.
Season 1 Episode 12: "Nuptial Song" (5/1/20)
Aging musical conductor Master Roman Pires is loved and respected by all -- a local celebrity, in fact. And yet, his dream has always been to compose. Confined at home during a sudden illness, he finds a burst of energy to compose the one simple melody that will be the fulfillment of his life. A kind of "Eleanor Rigby" in prose, this story is a invocation to the compassion so important in times like these -- indeed, in any time. Every life is a complex story never quite heard, not a number. Singer-songwriter Janeen Rae Heller was commissioned to provide the musical arrangement for this episode and brings us a startling performance of another musical composition by the incomparable Chiquinha Gonzaga.
Season 1 Episode 13: "Go Filthy Get Filthy!" (5/15/20)
A man remembers a conversation he had many years ago on the terrace of the Theatre of São Pedro de Alcântara between acts of a play, which he doesn't remember nearly so well as the incident of his friend's story about guilt, justice, conscience, and getting filthy rich
season two: the cariorker character
Season 2 Episode 1: Cecília Afonsopena (11/18/20)
What's in a name? In Rio de Janeiro you might be surprised. Cecília Afonsopena was born in Rio de Janeiro, but her family roots extend well into the country's interior and to the early days of the First Republic. A great grand-daughter of the Brazilian President Alfonso Pena, Cecília is a true "carioca da gema" who cut a swath in New York City in the 1970s.
THE BIOS AND GALLERY
CHIQUINHA GONZAGA is the composer of The Cariorker podcast theme music, "Gaúcha," or "Corta-Jaca," composed in 1895. Gonzaga was the first popular Brazilian woman composer and a Carioca. She was also a single mother in Rio, and raised her son from playing music. Many of the stories in The Cariorker feature short musical epilogues from her repertoire played on violão by Todd Conner. Read more about
LOUIS PAGE plays on Episode 5, "Chapter of the Hats," an exquisite variation of Chiquinha Gonzaga's Saudade, owing to influences from Mr. Page's expertise with the repertoire of Chopin. Mr. Page is a Sri Lankan-American pianist based in New York City. He has lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the USA. In Sri Lanka, he has performed with the nation’s Chamber Music Society and the Sri Lank
CARLO PENZA plays on Episode 11, "Canary on the Brain," one of the most beloved Brazilian songs ever, Tico-Tico no Fubá composed in 1917 by Zequinha de Abreu. Tico-Tico was once the most famous Brazilian tune in the United States well before there was Bossa Nova. Mr. Penza is an accomplished jazz pianist, composer and arranger, and has played with some of Brazil's biggest musical stars, including
JANEEN RAE HELLER plays on Episode 12, "Nuptial Song," yet another beautiful Chiquinha Gonzaga composition, Santa, in a brand new arrangement commissioned to her for The Cariorker. Ms. Heller is a Los Angeles-based guitarist, singer-songwriter and one the elite few virtuosos of the musical saw. Her playing can be heard on the recordings of Joan Baez, Ricky Lee Jones, Michael Hedges, Elvis Perkins
CECÍLIA AFONSOPENA (S2Ep1) is a native of Rio de Janeiro, a resident of Copacabana, and a "carioca da gema." She lived in New York City in the 70s, after coming to the US to pursue a modeling career. As a singer she performed in New York and extensively around the state. She performed with a wide array of highly active New York Latin and jazz musicians of the era such as Antonio Zepeda, Dan and Da
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