Gaya

An accomplished composer, arranger, and orchestrator, Lindolfo Gaia launched his professional career in 1942 at Rio de Janeiro’s Rádio Transmissora. He later joined Rádio Tupi, contributed to the Orquestra do Chiquinho at Rádio Clube, and supplied arrangements plus orchestrations to RCA Victor and Odeon for more than fifteen years. Early in the 1950s he assembled his own ensemble, Gaia e Sua Orquestra. In 1951 the valses “Morrer Sem Ter Amado” and “Último Beijo,” both by Zequinha de Abreu, appeared under his name, while his wife Stellinha Egg recorded the baião “Pregão”; Zaccarias e Sua Orquestra simultaneously issued his baião “Minas Gerais,” whose charts he prepared with Zaccarias. Five years afterward Gaia earned the Best Album of the Year award for his work on Dorival Caymmi’s “O Vento” and “O Mar,” both sung by Egg.

Accompanied by Stellinha Egg, Gaia traveled to Europe and led the Philharmonic Orchestra of Warsaw, receiving a gold medal from the Polish government. In Moscow he directed the Grand Orchestra of the Strada Theater and performed original choros in Alexandrov’s film Folklore of Five Countries. While in France, Egg produced a motion picture for which Gaia served as musical director. Settled in Paris, he joined Ray Ventura’s staff and prepared additional recordings.

Back in Brazil he resumed arranging; during the early 1960s he scored Silvinha Telles’ LP Amor de Gente Moça and achieved success with his own album Dança Morena, which featured “Rosa Morena” by Dorival Caymmi and “Grau Dez” by Lamartine Babo and Ary Barroso. In 1965 the Euterpe prize recognized his compositions for the production Rio de Quatrocentos Janeiros, staged at the Copacabana Palace Hotel and later preserved on an LP marking Rio de Janeiro’s four-hundredth anniversary. The following year Gaia joined the jury that chose the entries for the first International Song Festival of TV Rio (I FIC) and subsequently arranged and conducted thirty-six of the selected pieces, among them “Saveiros” by Dori Caymmi and Nelson Motta. Those performances were issued on the LP O Grande Festival, for which he again received the Galo de Ouro prize. He also directed stage presentations by Elizete Cardoso and Amália Rodrigues, hosted popular-music television programs with his wife, continued supplying arrangements to Odeon, and eventually became the label’s A&R director.