Featuring a dozen musical guests, including McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, and Byron Miller, Encounter shows Flora Purim and her band mixing covers with some original pieces (co-/)written by the prolific Hermeto Pascoal, who also handles piano duties on the album. Despite the number of players and rotations from song to song, the album retains an airy lightness, clear continuity between tracks, and wonderful economy of performance.
The players also find room for some wonderful elaborations and tangents, kept tight enough to feel more like expansion than wandering, and the persistently recognizable shared character of the performances is made even more impressive by the album’s contents being pulled from three years of recording. Superb throughout, though there are some moments that almost drift away on their weightlessness, and an impressive showing from everyone involved.
Scrambled Brains 