During a long and uncommonly productive career, Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida achieved a ubiquity in popular music that has yet to be fully recognized. Largely responsible for the Brazilian/North American "samba jazz" that would eventually catch on in the form of a musical trend known as bossa nova, he played behind dozens of well-known pop vocalists and improved the overall texture of many a studio production ensemble. One credible estimate states that Almeida contributed to no less than 800 film soundtracks (among them The Old Man and the Sea, How the West Was Won, and Breakfast at Tiffany's), as well as countless TV scores. He also authored a series of guitar instruction books that are still in use worldwide. A master improviser and a skilled arranger as well as a brilliant interpreter of classical repertoire, he left for posterity superb recordings of works by J.S. Bach, Fryderyk Chopin, Claude Debussy, and Joaquín Rodrigo as well as a host of Brazilian composers including Heitor Villa-Lobos, Radamés Gnattali, and Alfredo Vianna. Almeida's own chamber compositions include a concerto for guitar and orchestra.

Laurindo Jose de Araujo Almeida Nobrega Neto was born in the village of Prainha near the Port of Santos in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, on September 2, 1917. He received his first musical instruction from his mother, a classically trained pianist, and credited her fondness for the music of Fryderyk Chopin as a primary influence. After observing his sister being given guitar lessons, "Lindo" borrowed her instrument and retreated to a barn where he taught himself to play entirely by ear, transferring what he'd heard his mother play on the piano to the strings of the guitar. Many years later he would declare his preference for the direct intimacy of the guitar as opposed to the more percussive piano. By the age of nine he had become uncommonly skilled and was well on the way to becoming a guitar virtuoso; it was then that he lost his father to typhoid fever. At 12 he relocated to São Paulo with his brother. He joined the Revolutionary Army at 15 and was wounded in a civil conflagration. While recuperating in a hospital he met Garoto, a nationally respected guitarist who was visiting to perform for the patients. Within a few years, Almeida would perform and record extensively with Garoto.

In 1935 Almeida moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he teamed up with singer and tenor guitarist Nestor Amaral and began working in radio while becoming active as a songwriter, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist and performing regularly at the Casino da Urea. He composed folk songs, fox trots, sambas, choros, waltzes, and comedic airs, and worked with a broad range of artists including choro master Pixinguinha. He also collected 78-rpm jazz records, and was especially fond of the way Fats Waller played the piano. In 1936, at the age of 19, he got a job (playing banjo for the most part so as to be heard) for half a year on the Cuyaba, a cruise ship that docked in every country along the coast of Europe from Spain to Germany. While visiting Paris he was able to hear Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli in person. In 1941 he played the Casino Copacabana, and switched over to the Casino Balneario da Urca the following year. It was there that he met a Portuguese ballerina named Natalia (Maria Miguelina Ferreira Ribeiro) in 1944 and married her shortly afterwards.

After touring north with Carmen Miranda, Laurindo Almeida moved to Los Angeles in 1947, and was able to do so because of royalties received from the sale of his tune "Johnny Pedlar," made famous as "Johnny Peddler" by popular acts like Jimmy Dorsey, Les Brown, and the Andrews Sisters. He performed in Laguna Beach with Nestor Amaral, José Oliveira, and violinist Elisabeth Waldo and appeared in a variety show with vocalist Dennis Day and comedians Victor Borge and Red Skelton, and in movies with Jimmy Durante and Danny Kaye. What made Almeida so different from anyone else on the scene at the time was his practice of using only his fingers on the guitar strings; everybody else used picks. When asked who his favorite guitarists were, he gave an answer that was emblematic of his entire career: classical virtuoso Andrés Segovia and Oscar Moore of the King Cole Trio. Almeida's film production work brought him to the attention of bandleader Stan Kenton, who hired and featured him while absorbing stylistic elements of the northeast Brazilian baiao, the samba, and the choro. Kenton eventually composed "Lament" especially for the guitarist. Almeida's direct involvement with Kenton's orchestra lasted until 1952. His first album as a solo artist, Concert Creations for Guitar, was released in 1950 by Kenton's host label, Capitol.

Just as Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, and Chano Pozo had enlivened the scene with their Afro-Cuban jazz during the late '40s, Laurindo Almeida's session work during his first decade in the U.S. pollinated the modern jazz scene with rhythms and melodies from Brazil. During the years 1953-1958, he recorded several jazz samba albums with saxophonist Bud Shank that have since come to be regarded as precursors of the bossa nova trend of the late '50s and early '60s. In addition to steady session work with vocalists like June Christy, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Peggy Lee, Robert Mitchum, Connie Russell, Frank Sinatra, Martha Tilton, Mel Tormé, Kitty White, and vocal groups like the Four Freshmen, the Hi-Lo's, and the Platters, Almeida collaborated with bandleader Ray Anthony, pianist George Shearing, multi-instrumentalist Herbie Mann, space age pop music's Juan Garcia Esquivel, Kenton's right-hand man Pete Rugolo, and Hollywood's master of movie music Henry Mancini.

Between 1960 and 1967 Almeida put out no less than nine pop-oriented albums for Capitol; these were in addition to at least as many "classical" titles for that label. When the bossa nova craze really set in, Almeida brought an authentic Brazilian presence to records by Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, and Cal Tjader; he also assisted with a Harry Belafonte Christmas LP and cut an album with the Modern Jazz Quartet, touring with them throughout all of Europe. While continuing to work with Mancini, he practiced anonymity as a member of Guitars Unlimited and the 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett, sat in with bandleader Gerald Wilson, backed Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., and shared a session with trumpeter Rafael Méndez. In 1968 he played on the soundtrack of the film Charly, based upon Flowers for Algernon, a novel by Daniel Keyes.

In 1970 Almeida was one of the musicians backing Phil Ochs on his Greatest Hits album, produced by Van Dyke Parks, who invited the guitarist back to record the album Discover America in 1972. In 1974 Almeida and Bud Shank formed the L.A. 4 with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne (later replaced by Jeff Hamilton); this unit would eventually turn out at least eight albums, mostly for the Concord label, with which Almeida would be closely associated for the rest of his days. During the 1980s he performed with his second wife, Canadian soprano Deltra Ruth Eamon; he also recorded several albums with guitarist Charlie Byrd and led a trio at Disney World in Orlando, FL. In 1988 he formed a three-piece unit called Guitarjam with Sharon Isbin and Larry Coryell. Laurindo Almeida never failed to get behind musicians who earned his respect, and was especially supportive of other guitarists, including fellow Brazilian Baden Powell and classicist Paulo Bellinati. At the age of 74 he cut a live album (Outra Vez) with his trio at a club near San Diego, performing (in addition to his own compositions) works by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Enriqué Granados, Thelonious Monk, Ludwig van Beethoven, Irving Berlin, and Antonin Dvorák. This intriguingly diverse selection was typical of Laurindo Almeida, who passed away on July 26, 1995, in Van Nuys, CA. ~ arwulf arwulf

Acoustic guitarist Carlos Barbosa-Lima performed and recorded a wide repertory incorporating elements of classical music, jazz, and numerous Latin traditions. He has also a noted arranger of music for the guitar. Although he was not strictly a jazz player, his arrangements influenced the jazz world, and he had many jazz-oriented fans. Barbosa-Lima released the first album of his six-decades-plus recording career, Dez Dedos Magicos Num Violão De Ouro, in 1958. Classical composers, including Alberto Ginastera, began to write especially works for him. Barbosa-Lima performed with jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd and met songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim, then living in New York. In 1982, he released the acclaimed Plays The Music Of Antonio Carlos Jobim & George Gershwin. Barbosa-Lima's arrangements drew on classical techniques even as he grafted them onto other genres. He remained active well into old age and released Manisero in 2021.

Barbosa-Lima was born Antonio Carlos Ribeiro Barbosa-Lima in São Paulo, Brazil, on December 17, 1944. At seven, he took his first guitar lessons from his father, who transferred what he'd learned during his own period of instruction to his son. Auspiciously talented, Barbosa-Lima was introduced to composer and guitarist Luiz Bonfá, who referred him to classical guitarist Isaias Savio. At 12, Barbosa-Lima gave his debut recital in São Paulo, and the following year, he performed in Rio de Janeiro and appeared on Brazilian television.

In 1958, at age 14, Barbosa-Lima released his first album, Dez Dedos Magicos Num Violão De Ouro on RCA subsidiary Chantecler. During the 1960s, he recorded classical works form Brazilian and Latin composers as showcased on 1962's Imortal Catullo. He released a pair of albums in 1966, Álbum De Modinhas and Concerto em Viola Brasileira. He toured through South, Central, and North America, making his U.S. debut in 1967 in Washington. Later that year, he appeared at New York's Carnegie Hall, and that concert and one at Town Hall two years later following the release of 1969's Concerto En Modo Frigio De Eduardo Grau, brought him to the attention of international concert bookers. Classical composers, including Argentina's Alberto Ginastera, began to write works especially for him. After releasing In A Scarlatti Guitar Recital for ABC in 1970, Barbosa-Lima taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from 1974 to 1978.

In 1981, Barbosa-Lima moved to New York after accepting a teaching position at the Manhattan School of Music. By that time, he had arranged a good deal of music for guitar, some of it, like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, jazz tinged. Barbosa-Lima performed with jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd and met songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim then living in New York. Both musicians were impressed by Barbosa-Lima's arrangements, that drew on classical techniques, and Byrd arranged for Barbosa-Lima's signing with the Concord label. That year he released the first album in a trilogy highlighting Brazilian and American composers with Plays The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim & George Gershwin for the Concord Concerto imprint. He followed it with Carlos Barbosa-Lima Plays The Entertainer & Selected Works By Scott Joplin a year later. He completed it with 1984's Plays The Music Of Luiz Bonfá And Cole Porter. The following year he issued Impressions, a collection of miniatures by European, Brazilian, Latin and American composers.

Barbosa-Lima did not generally improvise, but he gained a strong jazz following and recorded several albums for Concord Picante. His debut, 1987's Brazil, With Love, was recorded in duet with guitarist Sharon Isbin. They performed the works of Brazilian jazz composers and songwriters including Jobim, Alfredo Vianna and Ernesto Nazareth. Jobim himself penned the set's liner notes. The following year the duo released Rhapsody In Blue / West Side Story. In 1989, Barbosa-Lima joined guitarists Laurindo Almeida and Byrd along with bassist larry gtrenadier and drummer Michael Shapiro for Music of the Brazilian Masters, a collection of jazz and classical works.

1991's Chants for the Chief was a co-billed collaboration with Brazilian composer, producer, vocalist and percussionist, Thiago de Mello (brother of the celebrated poet, they share the same name). 1992's Music of the Americas included works by De Mello, Gershwin, and Dave Brubeck. The following year he released Ginastera's Sonata, offering the composer's Sonata Op. 47; Escordio; Scherzo; Canto; Finale framed by other works including Albert Harris's Concertino De California, For Guitar And String Quartet (assisted by the San Francisco String Quartet); Radamés Gnattali (with pianist Patricia Briggs), De Mello, and Almeida. The widely acclaimed set opened with the guitarist's own, "Las Abejas" and "Fabiniana." 1995's solo Twilight In Rio included three original compositions with Johnny Griggs in a recital that also included works by Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, Agustín Barrios-Mangoré, and Paulo Bellinati. 1996's From Yesterday to Penny Lane: Contemporary Works for Solo Guitar and Guitar & Orchestra included works by the Beatles, of course, but also Bobby Scott, Julio Sagreras, and Tárrega alongside originals composed with Griggs. Barbosa-Lima's final album of the 20th century was O Boto, a collection of pieces by various composers for guitar and orchestra and solo guitar. The highly varied set was bookended by George Frederick Handel's Harp Concerto in B flat major, Op.4/6, HWV 294 and Ernesto Cordero's Concierto Antillano.

Concord began to shift its aesthetic focus in the early 2000s, and Barbosa-Lima left the roster. He issued a pair of privately released albums in Mambo No. 5 and Natalia. He signed to then-new independent jazz label Zoho Music, whose initial concentration tended toward Latin jazz. The guitarist released the acclaimed Frenesí, a trio offering with percussionist Edgardo Aponte and bassist John Benitez. In 2004 and remained there the rest of his life. Just months later, Siboney appeared from the label, with the guitarist playing solo, as well as leading a quintet with bassist Eddie Gomez, saxophonist Dafnis Prieto, pianist Oscar Hernandez and percussionist Pepe Torres. In 2006 he followed with the trio offering Carioca, featuring bassist Nilson Matta and percussionist Duduka Da Fonseca.

Barbosa-Lima spent most of his life performing on the road across the Americas, Europe and Asia. From the turn of the century on, he held no permanent address. He returned to recording with 2009's Merengue, leading a trio offering interpetations of the song form by composers including Antonio Lauro, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Isaías Sávio among others. Harmonicist Hendrik Meurkens and percussionist Fonseca guested on the set.

2013's Leo Brouwer: Beatlerianas was a collaboration with the Cuban composer, guitarist Lawrence Del Casale, and the Havana String Quartet. Brouwer combined popular materials from the Western hemisphere with European styles in a manner related to the music of Villa-Lobos and Ginastera. The Beatlerianas could only, in the broadest sense, be classified as arrangements of Beatles' songs. Some pulled the music in neo-Classic or neo-Baroque directions; some are almost abstract texture studies, though none lost sight of the source material. Given the time the guitarist spent on the road, it proved difficult to record him. As a stopgap Zoho issued the archival offering, The Chantecler Sessions, Vol. 1: 1958-1959, and The Chantecler Sessions, Vol . 2 1960-1961, in 2015 and 2016 respectively. They combined his earliest solo readings of European composers with modern interpretations of works by Latin and Brazilian composers.

During the latter year, the guitarist issued Plays Mason Williams. He was a longtime admirer of the composer of the 1968 hit "Classical Gas" for his colorful approach to Western harmony and rhythm. Barbosa-Lima offered his reading of the track in a twin guitar version accompanied by Del Casale with Fonseca on percussion. In all, the set included interpretations of 14 compositions by the American composer and polymath. Barbosa-Lima toured in support of the recording for nearly two years.

Barbosa-Lima released Delicado in 2019. Accompanied by Del Casale and Fonseca, Barbosa-Lima wanted to capture the natural beauty of Rio de Janeiro as opposed to its vibrant night life. In a collection of Brazilian songs, he employed many traditional Brazilian rhythms and forms such as bossa, samba and choro. ther ensuing world tour was one of the guitarist's most successful, but was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He returned to the recording studio and released Manisero in 2021 with German guitarist Johannes Tonio Kreusch and his brother, pianist Cornelius Claudio Kreusch. It showcased a collection of short pieces from well-known Latin, South American and Brazilian composers including Bonfá, Jobim, Agustin Lara, Manuel Ponce, and Moisés Simons. The set drew rave reviews across the globe. It proved his final album. Barbosa-Lima died after suffering a heart attack in Paraty, Brazil, on February 23, 2022. ~ James Manheim, Thom Jurek

Tasteful, low-key, and ingratiatingly melodic, Charlie Byrd had two notable accomplishments to his credit -- applying acoustic classical guitar techniques to jazz and popular music and helping to introduce Brazilian music to mass North American audiences. Born into a musical family, Byrd experienced his first brush with greatness while a teenager in France during World War II, playing with his idol Django Reinhardt. After some postwar gigs with Sol Yaged, Joe Marsala and Freddie Slack, Byrd temporarily abandoned jazz to study classical guitar with Sophocles Papas in 1950 and Andrés Segovia in 1954. However he re-emerged later in the decade gigging around the Washington D.C. area in jazz settings, often splitting his sets into distinct jazz and classical segments. He started recording for Savoy as a leader in 1957, and also recorded with the Woody Herman Band in 1958-59. A tour of South America under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1961, proved to be a revelation, for it was in Brazil that Byrd discovered the emerging bossa nova movement. Once back in D.C., he played some bossa nova tapes to Stan Getz, who then convinced Verve's Creed Taylor to record an album of Brazilian music with himself and Byrd. That album, Jazz Samba, became a pop hit in 1962 on the strength of the single "Desafinado" and launched the bossa nova wave in North America. Thanks to the bossa nova, several albums for Riverside followed, including the defining Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros, and he was able to land a major contract with Columbia, though the records from that association often consisted of watered-down easy listening pop. In 1973, he formed the group Great Guitars with Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel and also that year, wrote an instruction manual for the guitar that has become widely used. From 1974 onward, Byrd recorded for the Concord Jazz label in a variety of settings, including sessions with Laurindo Almeida and Bud Shank. He died December 2, 1999 after a long bout with cancer. ~ Richard S. Ginell