Tania Maria

Brazilian jazz vocalist and pianist Tania Maria's career has spanned over three decades, starting when she was just 13 and she fronted a band of professional musicians organized by her father, who was a metal worker and gifted amateur musician. He had encouraged her to study piano so that she could accompany him on his weekend jam sessions, but her musical talent grew beyond those small performances. Maria's four sisters also had musical talents, but they eventually grew from their impoverished roots to become professionals, a path that Maria was on herself as well. She attended law school for two years, then married and had a family. The pull of music was too strong, however, and in 1971 she released her first album in Brazil, Olha Quem Chega. In the late '70s she moved to Paris and expanded her career, touring internationally. A date in Australia brought her to the attention of guitarist Charlie Byrd, who hooked her up with Carl Jefferson, head of Concord Records. The label provided her with her first international commercial success with her 1984 album Come With Me, and continued to record her music and issue it to an international audience. Based in New York since the '80s, Maria still sings the pop and blues-influenced music that brought her fame, releasing several albums in the '90s. Her first album of the new millennium, Viva Brazil, was also released by Concord Records.

from Wikipedia:

Tania Maria (born May 9, 1948) is a Brazilian artist, singer, composer, bandleader and piano player, singing mostly in Portuguese or English. Her Brazilian-style music is mostly vocal, sometimes pop, often jazzy, and includes samba, bossa, Afro-Latin, Pop and Jazz fusion.

Biography

Born in São Luís, Maranhão, northern Brazil, she has a degree in law, and married early and had children. Tania Maria began playing the piano at the age of 7, became a leader at the age of 13, when her band of professional musicians, organized by her father, won first prize in a local music contest and went on to play for dances, in clubs and on the radio. Her father, a metal worker and a gifted guitarist and singer, had encouraged her to study piano so that she could play in his weekend jam sessions, where she first absorbed the rhythms and melodies of samba, jazz, pop music and Brazilian chorinho. Since then, she has never worked in anyone else's group. Maria's first album Apresentamos was released in Brazil in 1969, followed by Olha Quem Chega in 1971, but it was a move to France in the late 1970s that exploded Tania onto the international scene. At a concert in Australia, her formidable musical precision and freewheeling spirit caught the attention of the late American guitarist, Charlie Byrd, who recommended her to the late Carl Jefferson, founder of Concord Records.

Tania has played virtually every important jazz festival in the world and has appeared on countless television and radio programmes. Tania has recorded more than 20 albums and in 1985 was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category "Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female". Tania performed at prestigious venues like The Blue Note and famous festivals like the Monterey Jazz Festival in '81, '83 and '89, Saratoga Jazz Festival, JVC Jazz Fest 1991, Montreux Jazz Festival, New Orleans Heritage Festival, Puerto Rico Heineken Jazzfest 2001, Malta Jazz Festival 2003 at Maltese Islands, Novosadski Jazz Festival 2004, Belgium's Jazz Middelheim 2007, and has played with such greats as Steve Gadd, Anthony Jackson, Sammy Figueroa and Eddie Gomez.