Gal Costa Live

Recorded at a video taping in the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles as part of the Jazzvisions series, this was Jobim's live act shortly after he resumed touring in the mid-'80s. At the time, Jobim struck an avuncular, almost casually anti-show-business presence seated before a grand piano, presiding over a large ensemble composed of friends and family, singing in his endearingly rough, now-threadbare voice. Some of the performances here are little more than pro-forma run-throughs of standard Jobim oldies but things perk up when Jobim digs into some lesser-known compositions like his "Song of the Jet" and son Paulo's catchy "Samba do Soho." In any case, the material is always superb and the cool-voiced, always in-pitch Brazilian singer Gal Costa turns up on a few numbers.

Jobim made his last Brazilian concert appearance – and the penultimate one of his life – at this warm, star-studded affair in which American jazz musicians jetted down to the Free Jazz Festival in Sao Paulo to pay effusive homage. The miracle is how easily the jazzers were able to capture the yearning essence of Jobim's idiom without really compromising their own distinct styles. Thus, Joe Henderson welds his trademark unpredictable flurries into the cool tenor sax bossa nova tradition, Shirley Horn does "Once I Loved" in her own inimitable manner that matches the mood of the song perfectly, Jon Hendricks' scatting fits the samba like a glove. The pianists go somewhat outside the idiom – Herbie Hancock's modern complexity, Gonzalo Rubalcaba's technical fireworks laced with Afro-Cuban salsa – but they stay within their orbits around the Jobim sun.

Bossa Nova translated as the "new beat" or "the new style", grew out of Rio De Janeiro in 1958. The instigators were a handful of artists with a desire to break from tradition, developing the samba rhythms with the influence of cool American jazz to find a music with such a warm soul and natural rhythm that no-one can help but tap and sway to its beat. Bossa Nova is palm trees swaying, it is like melting sugar in hot coffee, it is the setting sun and warm sand underfoot. It is the sound and beat of Brazil, it is one of the world's coolest musical styles and it remains to this day one of the world's great musical treasures.

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When talking about bossa nova, perhaps the signature pop music sound of Brazil, the first name that comes to mind is that of Antonio Carlos Jobim. With songs like "The Girl from Ipanema" and "Desafindo," Jobim pretty much set the standard for the creation of the bossa nova in the mid-'50s. However, as is often the case, others come along and took the genre in a new direction, reinventing it through radical reinterpretation, be it lyrically, rhythmically, or in live performance, making the music theirs. And if Jobim got credit for laying the foundation of bossa nova, then the genre was brilliantly reimagined (and, arguably, defined) by the singer/songwriter and guitarist João Gilberto. In his native country he was called "O Mito" (The Legend), a well-deserved nickname: Since he began recording in late '50s Gilberto, with his signature soft, near-whispering croon, set a standard few have equaled.