Antonio Carlos Jobim - The Composer of Desafinado Plays

1. The Girl from Ipanema
2. O Morro
3. Agua de Beber
4. Dreamer
5. Favela
6. Insensatez
7. Corcovado
8. One Note Samba
9. Meditation
10. Jazz Samba (So Danco Samba)
11. Chega de Saudade
12. Desafinado

The Composer of Desafinado Plays

As the Schweppes man would say, this is a most "curiously refreshing" album. Curious, for during the entire length of the disc, Jobim, who is the featured soloist, plays what amounts to one-finger piano. Refreshing, because it is one of the loveliest and most deliciously lyrical albums to result from the bossa nova wave with which we've been inundated this last year.

All 12 selections are Jobim compositions, and each is so suffused with ardent, luminous grace and beauty, such soaring, uncloying lyricism, such unaffected tenderness and compassion, that one can only marvel at Jobim's superlative gifts as a melodist. Beautiful and romantic as his melodies are, and for all the deep strain of plaintive melancholy at their core, they are never saccharine or bathetic; never do they descend to the trivial or the facile. Rather, they exude a great love and humanity, to which one must respond immediately and fully.

The arrangements for the string orchestra Claus Ogerman has fashioned capture perfectly the essence of lilting gaiety and wistful sadness of Jobim's music, and they further complement and second the composer's effortless, deceptively simple single-note piano lines with their wonderful rhythmic strength and melodic clarity. Each setting superbly brings out the characteristic essence of the melody to which it has been wedded.

This collection is an unabashed delight from beginning to end, offering as it does a perfectly realized celebration of pure, lambent melodic beauty without a single trace of the contrived or the labored. Jobim's melodies sing effortlessly and they sing of the human heart.

If the bossa nova movement had produced nothing more than this album, it would have been more than justified. I cannot recommend this album highly enough and only wish there were more stars to award it.

(Pete Welding)