Ivan Lins

Sensitive and refined artist, – perhaps, together with Caetano Veloso, the best Brazilian composer since the death of Anthony Carlos Jobim – Ivan Lins has also conquered the not so simple tastes of the most demanding American jazz circles, thanks also to a lot of tours abroad, that have made him to be known as an author of extraordinary melodic vein.

He was Born in 1945, he finished his studies at Cambrigde, Massachesetts, getting a degree in chemistry, autodidactic in music, Lins reaches his first success  toward the end of the sixties, with pages of unmistakable romantic taste, made even more vivid by a rhythmic swing  inherited from the traditional samba: so they were composed “Madalena” (launched by the famous singer Elis Regina), “O Amor é o Meu País”  (used for a long time as boarding musical program by the national Brazilian airline company, Varig), “Abre Alas”, “Somos Todos Iguais Nesta Noite”, “Começar de Novo”, “Novo Tempo”, “Velas”, “Dinorah“ (presented by George Benson in a best seller recording “Give Me The Night”), in wide part all written with the collaboration of the excellent lyricist Vitor Martins.

A composer of delicious harmonic complexity and fascinating sense of rhythm, Lins has made himself known in Brazil and abroad, for his film sound tracks, composed for many Brazilian films and soap operas.

Its name perhaps tells a little to the great public; nevertheless, he is one of the authors more appreciated, beloved and respected by musicians all over the world. During the last thirty years a lot of his songs have become real standards of the Brazilian music, and they have been interpreted by an endless list of artists, among which Kenny Burrell, Sarah Vaughan, Bethy Carter, Nancy Wilson, Mark Murphy, George Benson, Daylights Schuur, Airto Moreira, Terence Blanchard and Manhattan Transfer.

In 2000 an album-tribute was released, “A Love Affair – The Music of Ivan Lins”  (Telarc) was made out of a story: in 1991 the producer Jason Miles received in New York a phone call of Miles Davis, who had previously received a tape with the music of Ivan Lins, enthusiastic, he said that he wanted to make a whole album with those songs. Unfortunately the jazz player died three months later and the album was not realized, but from that moment Jason Miles brought forth the project, than ten years later it was realized an album that included many great artists and Ivan Lins himself, who later confessed that he was him who had sent his tape to Miles Davis... Questro album, honored with two nominations to the Grammy Awards, it won in 2001 the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal with the song interpreted by Sting “She Walks This Earth (Soberana Rosa)” .

In over thirty years of career he has realised 25 albums. Some critics say that, if Caetano Veloso is the Bob Dylan of Bahia, Ivan Lins is the James Taylor of the Brazilian popular music.

Deeply involved in the bossanova music, inside those linguistic coordinates and rhythmic, but also crossed by centrifugal pushes, possessed by a pop spirit in in general sense. It is widely shown by the “gold book” of the musicians that have ransacked his songbook. Lins is considered before everything also as a composer, yet he is also recognized as an excellent skilled performer. A fine and eclectic composer that can be seen in many different readings.

Its story is studded of accidental events, apparently fortuitous. He is a unique case rather than rare, in the panorama of the music of his country for different reasons. The biography of the artist, in fact, seems in many ways a fairy tale story that ends – with unexpected events – with the traditional happy ending.

Lins grows in the creative ferment of the sixties, when the wind of the pop American and English blows strong in Brazil. Among his heroes there are Frank Sinatra and Pat Boone; even if, he declared some years ago, < when I started my idol was David Clayton -Thomas of the Blood, Sweat and a Tears... and I sang with the hoarse voice to imitate him. . > So, as a game and out of curiosity, that teen-ager with the intellectual face starts to strum the piano.

He decides to found his own group, the Piramidal Quartet, with Aldir Blanc to the drums, Cesárius Alvim to the bass and Luis Cachaça to the flute. They played instrumental themes and they occasionally exhibited at the Jovem Theater of Rio. Here Ivan is noticed by the vocalist Nara Leão. She understands that his destiny is tied up to composition. But He curried on playing music as a hobby to be enjoyed secretively, during the night, because in the daytime He works as chemist. He entitles “Até o Amanhecer “ (“Till Down”) the song that he sends in contest to an university festival. He writes the lyrics, the music is by Waldemar Correia and Ciro Monteiro sings it. We are at the beginning of the seventies. A few months later the success of “O Amor É o Meu País” (“The Love is My Country”), and it is from here that it begins the association with the lyricist Ronaldo Monteiro de Souza. From their forge it goes out among others the already mentioned “Madalena” blessed by Elis Regina, amongst the first ones to believe in the versatile talent of the singer songwriter.

For Lins –that in the meantime founded the University Artistic Movement, with the colleagues Aldir Blanc and Gonzaquinha – is a golden moment. They multiply interviews and television apparitions, and that introverted boy becomes a star. Started off from the aesthetic bossanova, he succeeds in creating attractive pop melodies enjoyable at different levels, original yet pleasant since the first listening. But the spell breaks. The uneasy Ivan realizes to He has been manipulated he doesn´t have the control of his music anymore. For this the decision to stop with the show business and with the television system.

In 1973 the turn. The album, from the autobiographic title, “Quem Sou Eu?”  (Who am I?“) cleans up the image that the media have pun on him. A year later, the most important meeting of his artistic life: that with Vitor Martins, lyricist that signs with him some of the most beautiful Brazilian song of the last thirty years. Songs as “Abre Alas” (“Corridors”),“Somos Todos Iguais Nesta Noite” (“We are all alike tonight”), “Novo Tempo”, (“New Time”), “Começar de Novo” (“Begin again”), “Dinorah”, ‘Desesperar Jamais” (“Never despair”)They become references of the Brazilian popular music and high quality standards for authors of jazz and internacional pop music. Able to find particular compositive solutions, Lins as interpreter also grows: the voice is personal, modeled entirely on a different falsetto by that of Milton Nascimento, he is able to dance the song harmony and to colour the meanings of the lyrics.

Sensitive talent-scout, Ivan also founds a record label–As Velas–for the promotion of young Brazilian musicians. At the beginning of the eighties, the Midas King of production Quincy Jones wants him to embellish with some carioca spices an album pop-oriented by George Benson.

It is the beginning of a second youth. Lins moves to Los Angeles and begins a bright career of composer for sound tracks. It has just been few years, after returning in Brazil, that he has restarted his job as singer songwriter and arranger.

His return home is put to the test straight away: the album-homage to Noel Rosa (“Long live Noel” 1 and 2 - 1997) and the intriguing “Jobiniando” (2001), where it rereads with a class of its own some unforgettable masterpieces of the great Tom Jobim, confirming himself one of the innovators of the modern musical scene of his Country.