DVD of the Month - "Astrud Gilberto: Lugano Festival"

DVD of the Month
Astrud Gilberto: "Lugano Festival Jazz 1985" (CV/AMF) 2010

Bossa nova icon Astrud Gilberto, who was catapulted to worldwide fame through his million-selling and multi-Grammy winning recording of "The Girl from Ipanema" at age 24, just turned 70 last March 30th. To celebrate the date, Brazilian label Coqueiro Verde will be releasing, on April 6, a DVD taped live at the 1985 Lugano Jazz Festival and distributed here in the USA by AMF (All Media Fun) Entertainment, LLC.

At that time of this performance, on July 2, 1985, Astrud was 45 and in top form, backed by a quartet with Stephen Herrick (piano), João Marcelo Gilberto (her son with João Gilberto, on bass), Duduka da Fonseca (drums) and David Sacks (trombone).

However, none of the musicians are credit on the DVD cover, neither the composers...

The tracklist features a couple of intriguing tunes by Paulo Jobim ("Milky Way" and the highlight "Cumbia," mispelled "Kumbia"), five by his father Antonio Carlos Jobim ("Waters of March," "A Felicidade," an uninspired reading of "Dindi", "Água de Beber" and of course "Girl from Ipanema" in a much faster tempo than usual), and a wordless vocal performance of João Donato's "A Rã" ("The Frog"), without the lyrics added by Caetano Veloso in 1973.

There's also a bilingual version of Baden Powell's "Canto de Ossanha" ("Let Go," alternating the Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes and the English words by Norman Gimbel recorded in one of Astrud's masterpiece albums, "September 17, 1969" for Verve), an English take on Roberto Menescal's best tune, "The Telephone Song" (with the English lyrics by Gimbel heard on another cult LP, "Getz Au Go Go") and Aloysio de Oliveira's Portuguese lyrics to "Edmundo" - actually, the Joe Garland/Andy Razaf tune "In the Mood" which became a huge hit for Glenn Miller the year Astrud was born.