Rob Curto's Forro for All

Rob Curto's Forró For All: a band dedicated to the sound of Northeastern Brazil’s “forró pé de serra”, performed with a sensibility born of New York City’s diverse and dynamic musical culture. Forró is both a musical genre and an event. In Northeastern Brazil a forró party unites communities and generations, with couples young and old dancing to accordion, zabumba and triangle. This collective celebration is a creative response to the difficulties of life in the Northeast and an expression of fantastic musical intelligence and wit. Forró For All’s founding member, Rob Curto, is a musician who both respects and transcends idioms, mixing elements of jazz with a language and feel that is distinctly Brazilian. At times his playing betrays a passion for rock and North American popular music of all kinds, showing always a great love for the bellows, buttons and keys of the accordion, the principal instrument of forró.

A native New Yorker and important member of that city’s world music and jazz scene, Rob has also spent years intimately involved with the music and culture of the Brazilian Northeast. He studied with great accordionists from Pernambuco, Brazil such as Arlindo dos Oito Baixos, Camarão and Silveirinha, and with guitarist and master of harmony Alencar 7-Cordas from Paraíba. Rob keeps as his bible the work of Dominguinhos (with whom he has performed), Sivuca, Oswaldinho, Hermeto Pascoal and of course the great innovator of forró, Luiz Gonzaga. He has spent years working as a musician in Brazil, and developed a reputation there as an extremely skillfull and artistic forró accordionist.