It would probably not be an overstatement to call this the most influential Brazilian album of all time. Originally released in 1959, Chega de Saudade is the album cited as creating bossa nova so to say that it lit a fire in the music world would be putting it mildly. It would be perhaps more accurate to say that it influenced so many musicians both at home (Caetano Veloso, Jorge Ben, etc.) and abroad (Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, Charlie Byrd) that it effectively single-handedly changed the way people both made and listened to music, and put Brazilian artists on the map. Almost every song on this album has gone on to become a standard, and Gilberto, called ''O Mito'', is today, at age 79, truly a living legend. Here Gilberto collaborates with both Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes,... Less

This groundbreaking recording features the Australian mezzo-soprano Amanda Cole in a program of fascinating and evocative Portuguese art songs. Now based in Dunedin, New Zealand, Cole conceived the project after discovering the little-known songs in music archives during a trip to Portugal in 2007. Using her gift for languages, she researched the literary, historical and cultural background to the songs, securing support from the Jack Straw Foundation in Seattle, USA and the Camões Institute in Portugal in order to perform and record them. She is joined on the album by the noted New Zealand pianist Sandra Crawshaw. As the extensive album notes explain, saudade is a wistful melancholy caused by the absence or disappearance of people or things to which one has become emotionally attached... Less

Release Date: 2004-08-16, Audio CD, Elefant Spain

Release Date: 2011-06-14, Audio CD, De Medeiros

Release Date: 2000-05-24, Audio CD, Bmg Japan

Release Date: 2008-04-15, Audio CD, High Note Records

Chega De Saudade (Lais Bodanzky)

Digitally remastered and expanded edition of this 1959 album from the master of the Bossa Nova. The Chega De Saudade album is supplemented by the impossibly rare EP of songs from the film Black Orpheus and recordings of some of the famous songs from Chega De Saudade by contemporaries such as Elizete Cardoso, Os Cariocas, Alaide Costa, Norma Bengell and Bola Sete. In the summer of 1958, a singer-guitarist from Bahia in the north of Brazil called Joao Gilberto created a musical revolution when he joined with Bossa Nova's seminal songwriting team, the gifted composer Ant"nio Carlos Jobim, and the poet and former diplomat, Vinicius de Moraes, to record the songs that would launch this cool, futuristic new music for a confident new era. Gilberto brought an unprecedented guitar style and a... Less

2006 album by this excellent Duo. This album features "On a slow boat to China," "Swanee," "That old black magic," "Tenderly," "A saudade mata a gente," "Copacabana," and "Minha saudade," a partnership between Joao Donato & Joao Gilberto.