The 83-year-old Brazilian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto, best renowned for his work on The Girl from Ipanema, has passed away.
She made 16 albums and collaborated with musicians as diverse as Quincy Jones and George Michael while becoming one of Brazil’s biggest talents in the 1960s and 1970s.
More than five million copies of her rendition of The Girl From Ipanema were sold, and it contributed to the growth of bossa nova.
The artist’s granddaughter Sofia Gilberto announced her passing on Instagram.
Sofia, a musician herself, wrote:
“I’m here to tell you the terrible news that my grandma became a star today, and is next to my grandfather Joo Gilberto.
“She was the finest and a pioneer. She lent her voice to the English version of Girl from Ipanema at the age of 22, achieving international renown.
Guitarist Paul Ricci, who performed with Gilberto and is located in New York, also verified the information on Facebook.
He commented,
“I just learned that we lost Astrud Gilberto from her son Marcelo.” “He requested that this be publicized.
“She was a vital component of EVERY aspect of Brazilian music performed worldwide, and her spirit altered many people’s lives. From “the chief,” as she referred to me, RIP.
Gilberto’s agents have been contacted by the BBC for formal confirmation.
She migrated to Rio de Janeiro at a young age and received musical inspiration from her mother’s side of the family, where “almost everyone played an instrument.” Astrud Evangelina Weinert was born in Bahia.
She became involved with what she called a “musical clan” of young people in her mid-teens, which included notable musicians like Joo Gilberto, who helped develop bossa nova, and the renowned guitarist Nara Leao.
Astrud and Joo got married shortly after they first met, and it was their union that unintentionally launched her recording career.
She traveled with her spouse to New York in 1963 to assist him in the recording of an album with jazz great Stan Getz.
Gilberto timidly proposed she is the vocalist when the band needed someone to record the English lyrics for The Girl From Ipanema.
Engineer Phil Ramone said to Jazzwax in 2012:
“Producer Creed Taylor said he wanted to get the song done right away and looked around the room.”
Asdrud offered up her services, claiming she could sing in English. Great, Creed said. Although Astrud wasn’t a trained vocalist, she was the lone victim there that evening.
Gilberto’s distant yet seductive vocals brilliantly nailed the feeling of a “tall and tan and young and lovely” female who turns the minds of everyone she passes, despite the fact that she had little time to prepare.
The Record of the Year Grammy Award went to the song, which became an immediate smash.
Gilberto only earned the normal $120 session fee for her performance, and she wasn’t given credit for the song (which was published under the names Stan Getz and Joo Gilberto).
However, it served as the launchpad for a lucrative solo career, which began with 1965’s The Astrud Gilberto Album, on which she collaborated once more with Antonio Carlos Jobim, the co-writer of Ipanema, to record a collection of Brazilian standards.
Her son Marcelo stated that Gilberto battled misogyny in the music industry and suffered from the objectification she experienced from the press in an interview with The Independent published last year.
In the early 2000s, Gilberto reflected on how several individuals had taken credit for her success with Ipanema, with Stan Getz claiming to have saved her from being a “housewife” in a blog post on her website.
She wrote,
“Nothing could be further from the truth.” “I suppose it could make me appear ‘important’ to have had the ‘knowledge’ to see skill or ‘potential’ in my singing… I suppose I should be flattered by the weight they give this, but I can’t help but be irritated that they used deception in the process.
She started creating her own songs in the 1970s, as heard on albums like That Girl From Ipanema (1977) and Astrud Gilberto Now (1972).
On the latter, she fulfilled a lifelong dream by teaming up with famed jazz trumpeter Chet Baker to record one of her songs, Far Away, as a duet.
She established a second professional path in addition to performing, appearing in the movies The Hanged Man and Get Yourself a College Girl as well as contributing to the Quincy Jones-arranged soundtrack for The Deadly Affair.
Gilberto started a band with her son Maeclo on bass and toured the world in the early 1980s, but she generally avoided performing in Brazil because she believed she had not received the respect she deserved there.
“Brazil turned its back on her,” Marcelo said to The Independent. “She became famous abroad at a time when the press viewed this as treasonous.”
She collaborated with James Last to record a collection of traditional samba songs in Europe, and George Michael approached her to sing alongside him on a cover of Desafinado for the 1996 charity album Red Hot + Rio.
Having previously stated that “being close to the public was frightening,” she released her final album, Jungle, in 2002, following which she took an extended break from performing in front of an audience.
The singer spent most of her latter years advocating against cruelty to animals, but the legend of her debut album endured thanks to covers by everyone from Madonna and Frank Sinatra to Amy Winehouse and Nat King Cole.
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