The New Bossa Nova

This is my first album for Luciana Souza and I am well impressed. Smooth voice; Smooth re composition for each song, James Taylor nicely adding his lovely voice on "Never die Young"; This album is a bouquet of nice songs of Sting, James Taylor, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Brazilian Bossa Nova? No.
Bossa Nova Luciana Souza's style? Absolutely.
Highly recommended for all the smooth Jazz, Smooth Rock and Bossa Nova lovers, who are into some great music, composed by all the artists I mentioned above, played, twisted and sang in an absolutely lovely and charming way.
4 stars or 5 are well deserved.
Other well recommended album of a similar great style:
Joni Mitchell: Turbulent Indigo
Joni Mitchell: Taming the Tiger

Bossa nova has been in Luciana Souza's blood since she was a child growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the early '60s as the daughter of two of its innovators, Walter Santos and Tereza Sousa.
So, after six critically acclaimed albums where her expansive, homegrown Brazilian musical vocabulary converged with American jazz, the three-time Grammy Award-nominated Los Angeles-based vocalist returns to the wellspring and explores bossa nova from a different slant on "The New Bossa Nova," produced by her husband, jazz musician/producer Larry Klein"(D.Quellette-Reuters).
"The New Bossa Nova" marks an exciting new chapter for the Brazilian-born vocalist and three-time Grammy nominee, who's already widely acknowledged as one of jazz's most respected and accomplished vocalists.
The 12-song album finds the artist crafting a fresh and highly personal variation on the beloved bossa nova style.
Luciana Souza's CD, which translates fully as 'the new new groove', is a reminder of how much bossa nova lies embedded inside a whole strain of contemporary American music, as in the first two songs, by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor respectively.
In the first, "Down To You", she sounds remarkably like Joni Mitchell, or maybe it's because Mitchell's jazz phrasing is actually more akin to Brazilian.
The same is true for James Taylor's "Never Die Young", which features the American singer/songwriter, who joins Souza for a soulful duet reading of his song.
In this context, James Taylor's relaxed vocals sound like so much Musica Popular Brasiliera.
The rest is material from composers from Randy Newman to Leonard Cohen, Sting, and the godfather of bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim. In this spirit, the Brazilian-born Souza manages to sound true to both her birthplace and the United States, where she currently lives.
Her well-trained voice is comfortable with all idioms, backed by a tight Brazilian jazz combo. There is a new new groove abroad, which is to say, at home.
The resulting album confirms Souza's reputation as both a world-class vocalist and a versatile, consistently adventurous creative force.
The project is Souza's first collaboration with her husband, producer/musician Klein, whose extensive resume encompasses work with artists as diverse as Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, Freddie Hubbard, Peter Gabriel and Wayne Shorter.
"The New Bossa Nova" also features a stellar cast of players including tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, guitarist Romero Lubambo, pianist Edward Simon, bassist Scott Colley, vibraphonist Matt Moran and drummer Antonio Sanchez.
My favourite tracks : "Never Die Young", "Down to You" and "Waters of March".
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I just saw Luciana perform some songs from this album last night and of course the CD just doesn't do them justice. I was not familiar with her music and checked out some of her music here on Amazon before deciding to go to the concert. I loved the traditional Bossa Nova songs she sings in Portuguese, but I was a little skeptical because the focus for the concert were the songs from this CD which are in English and quite frankly sound a little boring and dry when listening to the CD; even though she tries to bring that Bossa Nova flavor into them. She is a wonderful talent, but the music on this CD is one better experienced in a live concert.

Luciana Souza and producer Larry Klein have taken an interesting collection of (mostly) pop rock tunes and applied a jazzy bossa styling with great depth and feel. In my opinion, this is exactly how cover records should be. Always endeavor to stretch the original rendition into new musical territory.

As an avid Steely Dan fan, it was a great joy to hear "Third World Man" interpreted with previously unused Becker/Fagen lyrics (re-titled here as "Were You Blind That Day"). Just awesome.

I'm not a huge fan of vocal jazz but Luciana is very talented vocalist. This album was very well engineered and sounds fantastic.

It was OK, but a little too pop for me. I was looking for more challenging in Brazilian music.