Known for his work with Yonatan Gat and as a member of Garotas Suecas, Sessa has been a fixture of both the American and Brazilian music scenes, continually bringing new life to both with his takes on Brazilian music. Grandeza is his debut album as a solo artist, and it is an exploration of Brazilian pop, and what it could be in his hands.
Grandeza manages to be both involved and minimalist at the same time. In other words, while Sessa uses a lot of instrumentation through his album, it never feels busy or over-complicated. The instrumentation is used in order to give colour to his songs.
The album is tied together by Sessa singing in Portuguese, and following the conventions of Brazilian pop. Outside of this, Sessa experiments with sound, perhaps to see what will work best for him in the future. As such, the album is full of tracks which switch voices, instruments, and timing. This level of experimentation is most obvious in Tanto, which features a change in tempo in the middle of the song. Other songs, such as Tesão Central and Infinitamente Nu, also show this spirit of experimentation more clearly than other songs.
Despite the strong experimentation on certain tracks, there is no question that this album is one whole entity. It comes together through the warmth that it brings to its subject, through the language used in each track, and through the way the instruments are used – the songs each have their own colourful nature based on the instruments available. The end result is an album which shows the life of the musical genre it is part of, and one which has a lot of promise in what will come next for the people who are involved.