Her dreamy voice will forever be associated with the song The Girl from Ipanema, which she sang in the early 1960s. At the age of 83, the Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto died this Monday in the USA. The British newspaper Guardian reported about it.
Her guitarist Paul Ricci announced the death on social networks, the singer’s son Marcelo confirmed it to The Independent. “She was an important part of Brazilian music around the world and her energy changed the lives of many,” he said. The cause of death is unknown.
Astrud Gilberto was born in 1940 in the Brazilian state of Bahia. The mother was Brazilian, the father came from Germany. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro, in 1959 she married guitarist João Gilberto. Four years later, she accompanied him on a trip to New York, where, at the age of twenty-two, she recorded with jazz saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian bossa nova star Antônio Carlos Jobim The Girl from Ipanemaa composition that has become synonymous with this genre for many.
The song, first recorded in 1962, the producer wanted to record in English this time to reach listeners in the West, and Astrud Gilberto was the only one of the Brazilian delegation in the studio who was able to do so, the Guardian describes. Antônio Carlos Jobim composed the music, the poet Vinícius de Moraes provided the Portuguese text, and the English text was written by Norman Gimbel. According to the creators’ later statement, the song was inspired by the seventeen-year-old Heloisa Pinheirouwho frequented the beach in the Ipanema neighborhood and often passed the Veloso bar, where the songwriters used to meet.
The song became a hit in both the US and UK in 1964 and won a Grammy for Song of the Year. That same year, Astrud Gilberto divorced her husband and toured the United States and Europe with saxophonist Getze’s band. She moved to the US and never performed in Brazil after 1965, writes The Independent.
The singer did not record a comparable hit in her new homeland for the second time, although The Girl from Ipanema returned to the charts in the early 1980s.
Astrud Gilberto eventually recorded over 16 studio records and released two live recordings. She performed until 2002, when she ended her career. In 2008, she received the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, supplies Guardian.
Video: Astrud Gilberto sings The Girl From Ipanema
Astrud Gilberto sings The Girl From Ipanema with saxophonist Stan Getz’s band, 1964 TV recording. | Video: Fabtv
