BAHIA: The 83-year-old Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto, who made ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ a worldwide classic, has passed away. The musician’s granddaughter Sofia Gilberto posted on Instagram that she had passed away, but she gave no other information.
“My grandma Astrud Gilberto made this song for me, it’s called Linda Sofia,” Sofia wrote in Portuguese. “She even wanted my name to be Linda Sofia.”
“Life is beautiful, as the song says, but I’m here to bring you the sad news that my grandmother became a star today,” she added. “[She] is next to my grandfather Joao Gilberto. Astrud was the true girl who took bossa nova from Ipanema to the world.”
According to People, friend and frequent collaborator Paul Ricci also shared the news on Facebook.
“I just got word from her son Marcelo that we have lost Astrud Gilberto. He asked for this to be posted,” he wrote. “She was an important part of ALL that is Brazilian music in the world and she changed many lives with her energy. RIP from the “chief” as she called me. Thanks AG.”
Astrud was born in 1940 in Brazil’s Bahia and raised in Rio de Janeiro. She later married musician Joao Gilberto in 1959.
When she and her husband travelled to New York in 1963 for a recording session with Stan Getz and fellow Brazilian bossa nova singer Antonio Carlos Jobim, her singing career got off to a fortunate start.
Astrud was the only person who could speak English and volunteered when the session producer needed someone who could speak English to help “The Girl from Ipanema” reach an American audience. Astrud had no prior recording experience.
“Astrud was in the control room when Norm came in with the English lyrics,” session supervisor Phil Ramone told JazzWax in 2010. “Producer Creed Taylor said he wanted to get the song done right away and looked around the room,” reported People.
He explained, “Astrud volunteered, saying she could sing in English. Creed said, ‘Great.’ Astrud wasn’t a professional singer, but she was the only victim sitting there that night.”
She wasn’t given credit for the song’s initial duet with her husband, but it was eventually re-edited without his Portuguese vocals and released as a solo single, where it quickly gained popularity. Astrud was nominated for best vocal performance by a female, and the song ended up earning the Grammy for Song of the Year.
As per People, that same year, she divorced Joao and toured the country with Stan Getz and his band. When the song became a success, Getz and producer Creed Taylor described Astrud as a housewife they had discovered — which angered her.
“Nothing is further from the truth,” she wrote on her website. “I guess it may them look ‘important’ to have been the one that had the ‘wisdom’ to recognize talent or ‘potential’ in my singing… I suppose I should feel flattered by the importance that they lend to this, but I can’t help but to feel annoyed at the fact that they resorted to lying!”
Although she did record a number of jazz albums, including The Astrud Gilberto Album in 1965, Astrud Gilberto Now in 1972, and That Girl from Ipanema in 1977, “The Girl from Ipanema” was her lone big hit.
She started a band in the 1980s and toured the globe with it. Her son Marcelo played bass in the ensemble. She stayed away from Brazil nonetheless because she believed she wasn’t treated fairly there.
In 2002, she finished recording her last album, Jungle, and then declared an indefinite break from performing in public. She received her induction into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in the same year. She received a lifetime achievement award at the Latin Grammys in 2008.
The memory of “The Girl from Ipanema” endured despite the fact that she devoted the majority of her later years to fighting animal abuse.
Astrud is survived by another son, Gregory Lasorsa, from her second marriage to Nicholas Lasorsa, which ended in divorce, in addition to Marcelo Gilberto, her son from her first marriage. (ANI)