“Rogério Botter Maio proves that Brazilian instrumental music can stay away from the media, but determinedly follows its path matching the creativity of the best music around the globe”.

Carlos Calado, journalist and musical reviewer

Roger Botter Maio is a Brazilian bassist active on the music scene since the 1980s.
Music jukebox has conducted studies between Brazil, Europe and America and its interests span from chamber music to jazz caught in Brazilian music. All influences that interweave and are well heard in the last work in his name, Prazer da espera. This is an intense CD written and arranged by Botter Maio himself except a trace, Mantiqueira, pianist Nelson Ayres: a melancholic ballad with two voices, piano and double bass.
Botter Maio is a great instrumentalist and is cool and pleasing in writing too: his songs follow with grace and delicacy and show great creativity. Songs on which we do not stop because everyone has in common a characteristic: that of transmitting emotions and serenity.
In this project Botter Maio is supported by an infinite array of great musicians who know how to get involved with the spirit of the project, providing further expressive elegance to the songs.
Characters such as Toninho Horta, Jovino Santos Neto, Jane Duboc, and Hermeto Pascoal have been “uncomfortable” to write good words of compliments on cover notes. And it is in the words of one of these, the great musician Hermeto Pascoal that we conclude this review: “O cd està muito bonito e repleto de boas composições e bons músicos! Parabéns, Rogerio

Gaspare Bonafede,  Jazzitalia | per Jazzitalia

“His compositions show great personality with influences from jazz, bossa and “Clube da Esquina”.

Refined and well constructed songs, transmit the colors and the emotion of being Brazilian. I congratulate this high level work, in a moment when this generation is more worried about showing instrumental virtuosity and producing music tied to the phonographic market around the world.

Rogério simply overcomes that, proving that it is still possible to create good quality music with fresh criativity”.

Toninho Horta, guitarist and composer

…Though Maio long ago left Brazil’s São Paulo for New York, South American music continues to dominate his writing. Many of the cuts here implement Brazilian music forms: samba, bossa nova, baião, frevo, but none settle for a nostalgic rehashing of Jobim’s and Gilberto’s era. Just as evident in Maio’s writing and arranging is an appreciation of complex jazz forms, especially those developed since the cool jazz era. Every cut presents an entirely different mood and the unique instrumentation is occasionally reminiscent of the great Hermeto Pascoal’s creative Brazilian musician combinations.

Too much Brazilian music influenced by jazz and too much jazz influenced by Brazil settles for merely mixing different combinations of both elements; Maio, however, injects a monstrous dose of his own take on what the two Americas can do musically that hasn’t yet been done. It’s a very impressive release, and a great find for those who have thrown up their hands in frustration over a lack of anything new emanating from down South American way.

With “an abstract notion of joy” and sophisticated style of composition, this demanded Brazilian bass player reviews the roots of his culture on his début CD. Armed with great musicians such as Claudio Roditi, Jane Duboc, Dom Salvador, Hendrik Meurkens among others, presents in all original compositions a broad variety of rhythms such as Samba, Baião, Maracatu and Frevo in a very authentic yet jazzy CD.

Dave McElfresh, Jazz Now Online Magazine

“The CD Prazer da Espera is very nice and full of good compositions and good musicians!”

Hermeto Pascoal, composer and multi-instrumentalist, 2005

“…by listening to Rogério’s cd, we easily notice the fine taste, sensibility and talent of this bass player”

David Hepner, journalist and music reviewer, Guitar Player Magazine (Brasil) 

“…Rogério’s music reflects his maturity crystallized in long experience living abroad”

José Domingos Rafaelli, journalist and musical reviewer “O Globo”, Jan 5th 2001