Jobim est né en 1927 à Rio De Janeiro.
A la fin des années 50, avec le poète Vinicius De Moraes et les chanteurs Joao Gilberto et Nara Ledo, il crée un nouveau genre de Samba baptisé « Bossa Nova » ou « New Thing ». Sa réputation devient internationale grâce à la B.O du film « Black Orpheus ». En 1962, il enregistre « Jazz Samba » avec le guitariste Charlie Byrd et le saxophoniste ténor Stan Getz. Cet album l’impose aux Etats-Unis.
Un peu plus tard, Jobim et Getz collaborent avec Joao Gilberto et sa femme Astrud. Les titres « Desafinado », « The One Samba » et « How Insensative » deviennent des standards jazz.
Pendant les trente années suivantes, Jobim travaille avec différents artistes comme Ron Carter, Nelson Riddle ou Franck Sinatra. En 1994, peu de temps avant sa mort, il enregistre avec Sting sur son dernier opus intitulé « Brasiliero ». La musique de Jobim s’étend au-delà du jazz ou de la world music. Il a crée son propre style et s’est imposé comme l’un des grands compositeurs du 20eme siècle. La culture brésilienne lui doit beaucoup pour son rayonnement dans le monde.
« Aguas De Marco »
Les indispensables
« Wave » (1967, A&M)
« Stone Flower » (1970, C.T.I., Sony)
« Elis & Tom » (1974, Verve / Universal)
« Jazz Samba » (1962, Verve / Universal)
For Our English Friends
Jobim‘s roots were always planted firmly in jazz; the records of Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Barney Kessel, and other West Coast jazz musicians made an enormous impact upon him in the 1950s. But he also claimed that the French impressionist composer Claude Debussy had a decisive influence upon his harmonies, and the Brazilian samba gave his music a uniquely exotic rhythmic underpinning. As a pianist, he usually kept things simple and melodically to the point with a touch that reminds some of Claude Thornhill, but some of his records show that he could also stretch out when given room. His guitar was limited mostly to gentle strumming of the syncopated rhythms, and he sang in a modest, slightly hoarse yet often hauntingly emotional manner.
Born in the Tijuca neighborhood of Rio, Jobim originally was headed for a career as an architect. Yet by the time he turned 20, the lure of music was too powerful, and so he started playing piano in nightclubs and working in recording studios. He made his first record in 1954 backing singer Bill Farr as the leader of « Tom and His Band » (Tom was Jobim‘s lifelong nickname), and he first found fame in 1956 when he teamed up with poet Vinícius de Moraes to provide part of the score for a play called Orfeo do Carnaval (later made into the famous film Black Orpheus). In 1958, the then-unknown Brazilian singer João Gilberto recorded some of Jobim‘s songs, which had the effect of launching the phenomenon known as bossa nova. Jobim‘s breakthrough outside Brazil occurred in 1962 when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a surprise hit with his tune « Desafinado » — and later that year, he and several other Brazilian musicians were invited to participate in a Carnegie Hall showcase. Fueled by Jobim‘s songs, the bossa nova became an international fad, and jazz musicians jumped on the bandwagon, recording album after album of bossa novas until the trend ran out of commercial steam in the late ’60s.