Uruguayan multi-instrumentalist, composer, and singer Hugo Fattoruso is perhaps best known to North American audiences as a member of Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento's band. But Fattoruso has been working for decades on intriguing fusions of jazz, Anglo pop, and Uruguayan music styles such as candombe (a drum-heavy African-rooted style) and murga (carnival music). His records with the Uruguayan trio Opa, recorded and released in the United States in the '70s and reissued in the '90s, are still fascinating, rich with possibilities. Homework, recorded both at his home in Montevideo and a New York studio, is disappointingly uneven. Some of the material is not fully realized. Other songs come across as weak stabs at pop. Still, Fattoruso is capable of smart, neotraditional songwriting, as in the delightful "Conmigo" or "Agua y Aceite." Also, the simple "Melodia de Candombe" and, especially, "El Gramillero" hint at the power, joy, and artistic potential of candombe. More of this would have been welcome. --Fernando Gonzalez