Search - Ivan Lins :: Love Affair: Music of Ivan Lins

After Antonio Carlos Jobim, no Brazilian composer is more celebrated in America than Ivan Lins. This is mostly due to his jazz and pop musician friends who recognize his genius and record his music. Unlike Jobim, though, Lins hasn't experienced a breakthrough with a bona-fide pop hit. That could change with A Love Affair: The Music of Ivan Lins, an 11-song tribute that boasts Sting singing a brand-new Lins composition and Chaka Khan putting a funky spin on "Crue Cra Corroro," retitled with English lyrics as "So Crazy for the Love." Smooth-jazz fans will appreciate turns by Peter White and the late Grover Washington Jr., but it's the vocalists that make this tribute a must for Ivan Lins fans. Brenda Russell, one of his best American collaborators, delivers "Nocturne" as sensually as anything on her own Paris Rain, and her lyric to "You Move Me to This" is a real winner in the hands of Lisa Fischer and "D Train" Williams. However, Lins's patented combination of romance, jazzy harmonies, and Brazilian pop are best personified on the last three tunes with Freddy Cole, Dianne Reeves, Joe Sample, and (on the final pair of tunes) the honored composer himself. --Mark A. Ruffin