Eliane Elias - "Bossa Nova Stories"

by Nate Chinen
The pianist Eliane Elias grew up in São Paulo long enough ago to appreciate bossa nova as an ascendant force. She has spent much of her career swimming with or just slightly against its current, while establishing her jazz credentials. Twenty years ago, when she made an album called “Eliane Elias Plays Jobim,” her approach was imaginative: she accessed her background for interpretive license rather than stylistic precedent.

“Bossa Nova Stories,” which enjoyed a successful release in Europe and Japan last year, pegged to the genre’s 50th anniversary, reflects clearly different priorities. It’s a self-consciously sophisticated pop record, showcasing Ms. Elias as a singer with a style that floats somewhere along the spectrum between Gal Costa and Diana Krall. As a listening experience, it’s impeccably alluring, but as an artistic statement it often rings hollow.

It’s hard not to feel at least half-cynical about a new bossa nova record that opens with “The Girl From Ipanema” and “Chega de Saudade,” two of the most obvious Antonio Carlos Jobim staples, and further glosses them with strings. The presence of American songbook fare like “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” seems similarly calculated, as does the inclusion of “Superwoman,” a Stevie Wonder tune.

Still, Ms. Elias is a more effective vocalist now than she was even a decade ago, when she released “Sings Jobim,” and her fondness for the songs is obvious. She also has expert partners in the studio, including the bassist Marc Johnson (her husband), the drummer Paulo Braga and, on most tracks, the guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves. They do unequivocally strong work in the album’s final stretch, finessing songs by Geraldo Pereira and João Donato with a looseness and bounce that could have helped earlier on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/arts/music/12choi.html?_r=2&ref=music