Luciana Souza

Luciana Souza stands out as a Grammy-honored Brazilian singer and composer who interweaves strands of her country’s folk and commercial traditions with jazz and present-day classical forms. Her smoky timbre carries an airy echo of Joni Mitchell, while her recording and stage partners have ranged from uncle Hermeto Pascoal and Steve Lacy to John Patitucci, Joey Calderazzo, and Oscar Castro-Neves. After the well-received 1999 debut An Answer to Your Silence, wider notice arrived when she earned a Grammy for her contribution to Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters. She explored Brazilian standards in spare duo format across Brazilian Duos I-III, guided a compact jazz group on 2009’s Tide, and delivered text-free yet richly communicative performances on 2015’s Speaking in Tongues. Souza also helped establish the vocal ensemble Moss alongside Theo Bleckmann, Peter Eldridge, Lauren Kinhan, and Kate McGarry. In 2020 she appeared with Vince Mendoza and the WDR Big Band on Storytellers, then joined forces with Brazil’s Trio Corrente for the 2023 release Cometa.

Born in São Paulo in 1966 to bossa nova guitarist and composer Walter Santos and poet Tereza Souza, she entered professional work at three years old by recording radio and television jingles. Childhood sessions with her father and additional artists took place in the family studio. Formal training occurred at both conservatory and academic levels; after four years at Unicamp University she completed a jazz-composition degree at Berklee College of Music in 1988. Recognition came in 1991 when APCA named her Discovery of the Year for her Pascoal collaborations, followed by a 1992 tour with the Zimbo Trio. She obtained a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1994 and has since returned there as both instructor and performer. Boston Music Awards nominations arrived in 1995 for Outstanding Latin Act and in 1996 for Outstanding Jazz Vocalist.

Souza co-produced her 1998 NYC Records debut An Answer to Your Silence with George Schuller; the track list mixed pieces by Chico Buarque, her father, George and Ira Gershwin, and Jobim with seven originals. Concert reviews appeared in the Village Voice, the New York Times, and various jazz outlets. Her second album, The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop and Other Songs, issued by Sunnyside Records in 2000, reached fifth place on The New York Times’ year-end pop and jazz critics’ list. The same honor met 2002’s Brazilian Duos, a set pairing her voice with three leading Brazilian guitarists on national standards; the recording earned her first Grammy nomination and peaked at number 15 on the World Music albums chart. She produced 2003’s Norte e Sul for an all-star band featuring Scott Colley, Donny McCaslin, and Edward Simon, focusing on well-known jazz and Brazilian material, then toured festivals across the United States, Brazil, and Europe. The 2004 project Neruda set ten of the poet’s works to music after she translated them herself. Duos II followed in 2005, reaching number 14 on the World Albums chart and bringing a Jazz Journalist’s Association nomination for Jazz Vocalist of the Year.

A year of touring preceded her 2007 collaboration with Golijov on Oceana, released alongside two additional pieces. That same year her Verve debut New Bossa Nova, produced by Klein, overlaid Brazilian rhythms on adult-contemporary songs by Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Becker and Fagen, Sting, Brian Wilson, and Taylor, including three duets with Matt Moran; it reached number 10 on the Jazz Albums chart. Hancock, drawn to the Mitchell-like quality in her voice, recruited her for the Grammy-winning and chart-topping River: The Joni Letters, after which she toured with his ensemble. Tide, her second Klein collaboration, appeared in 2009; Klein supplied most of the material, and the supporting cast included Larry Goldings, Vinnie Colaiuta, Larry Koonse, Romero Lubambo, Cyro Baptista, and Klein on bass. The album landed at number 15 on the World Albums list. Duos III arrived in 2012 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album. Also that year she issued The Book of Chet, featuring Koonse, David Piltch, and Jay Bellerose, interpreting less familiar standards associated with Baker; the recording earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album, peaked at number eight on the Jazz Albums chart, and brought another JJA Jazz Vocalist of the Year nod. Following a tour and the birth of a child, she returned in 2015 with Klein-produced Speaking in Tongues, supported by first-time collaborators Loueke, Grégoire Maret, Massimo Biolcati, and Kendrick Scott. The album comprised seven wordless pieces—four by Souza, one by Loueke, one by Scott with Mike Moreno, and one by Gary Versace—plus two Cohen poems set by Souza, drawing multiple year-end critics’ lists and ranking among her strongest works.

In 2017 Souza joined the Boston-based orchestra A Far Cry for The Blue Hour, a full-length song cycle composed collectively by Rachel Grimes, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, and Caroline Shaw and based on Carolyn Forché’s poem “On Earth” from the collection Blue Hour. After performances throughout New England and beyond, she reentered the studio for a Klein-produced return to poetry and original lyrics, setting works by Cohen, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Christina Rossetti alongside three of her own texts. Accompanied by Chico Pinheiro and Scott Colley, the resulting album The Book of Longing appeared in August 2018. Two years later she recorded Storytellers, her tenth Sunnyside release, with Vince Mendoza and the WDR Big Band; the project offered freshly arranged readings of songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chico Pinheiro, Edu Lobo, Chico Buarque, Guinga, Djavan, Ivan Lins, and Gilberto Gil, many previously performed by Souza, now illuminated by Mendoza’s orchestral palette and reflecting her seasoned artistic identity. In 2023 she united with São Paulo’s Trio Corrente for Cometa.