“We have a Chopin player in the house,” he said. And with a tiny smile he rockabyed the opening phrase of the Ballade and turned his head to look straight at Katie.

LIKE her brash, unflirtatious designs for urban tomboys, Alice Roi is not coy.

In its lean arrangements, her band conjured both traditions and possibilities: the tambourine and strummed cavaquinho (miniature guitar) of samba for “Na Gangorra,” a loungey acid-jazz pulse and hints of reggae for “Vento No Canavial,” African-tinged funk in the Vinicius de Moraes-Baden Powell song “Consolaçã” and in the French songwriter Camille Dalmais’s “1, 2, 3.”

Those sweet accords are even the angels' lays.