“Among master deliverers of the casual-sounding, off-handed vocal, Astrud Gilberto stands out. Her crisp Brazilian accent flavors every English vowel and consonant she utters. The lyrics to all the songs she has performed and recorded during her long career suggest her own sentiments and philosophy. An ardent advocate of animal rights and world peace, Gilberto composes and arranges some of the music she performs nowadays. Decades ago, if she picked Benny Carter and Sammy Chan’s “Only Trust Your Heart,” or Burton Lane and Yip Harburg’s “Look to the Rainbow,” she might have been letting her listeners know what mattered to her.
Love has been key. Indeed, love is Gilberto’s favorite, if not her only subject. Sensually and philosophically, the song lyrics she favors give her plenty of room to flirt, sigh, whisper, pout, hug, kiss, caress, question, care, and conquer.
The voice of Astrud Gilberto – guileless, believable, never cold-bloodedly professional – sometimes becomes a French horn, sometimes a tenderly bowed cello, and other times a clarinet or a breathy bamboo flute. Sometimes it even takes on the tremulous quiver of a tenor saxophone. But whether it finds itself swimming in a pond or an ocean – with intimate trio or quintet, or in full orchestral setting – Gilberto’s voice, presumed to be delicate but buoyed by love, always swims home to the heart”.
Read more about Astrud from her own website
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