Personnel

• Bebel Gilberto
• Celso Fonseca
• Luis De Monte
• Joao Donato
• Robertinho Silva
• Joao Parahyba
• Carlinhos Brown
• Smoke City
• Thievery Corporation
• Amon Tobin
• Mario Caldato, Jr.

  Facilities

• Wah Wah Studio, Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Gloria Mix Studio, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
• Dada Studio, Brussels
• Chocolate Factory Studios, London

   Producer

• Suba
• Bebl Gilberto
• Chris Franck
• Thievery Corporation
• João Donato

  Co Producer

• Bebel Gilberto
• Amon Tobin
• Mario Caldato  

  Mastered

• Alan Ward
• Electric City, Brussels  

Bebel Gilberto, the daughter of Bossa Nova master João Gilberto (The Girl From Ipanema), has created a modern classic with her debut recording, Tanto Tempo. Bebel continues the Gilberto legacy of crossing generational latitudes and musical longitudes through the magical language of bossa nova.

Tanto Tempo's modernist angle is supplied by producer Suba's brilliant arrangements and production, as well as by contributions from young electro-brazilophiles such as Smoke City, Thievery Corporation, Beastie Boys producer Mario Caldato Jr and NinjaTune artist Amon Tobin.

There are many ways of judging somebody. One of the best is by the company they keep. Bebel Gilberto has appeared on albums by some of the most important artists of our time. Caetano Veloso (Circulado), David Byrne (David Byrne), João Gilberto (dueting on "Chêga de Saudade" on João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira) and Chico Buarque (Francisco). On her first solo effort, a self-titled 1986 EP, she collaborated with one of the greatest Brazilian composers and performers of the day, Cazuza. Since then she sang "The Girl from Ipanema" on Kenny G's platinum selling Classics in the Key of G and made several contributions to the delicious bossa nova-infused score for Next Stop Wonderland. Her and Cazuza's hit "Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo" closed the great Red Hot & Rio compilation. And she has worked with such cutting-edge talents as Towa Tei (of Deee Lite fame,) Smoke City, Amon Tobin and the Thievery Corporation. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Another way of judging somebody, of course, is by looking at her family. And by that test, Bebel Gilberto is, simply put, royalty. Her father, João Gilberto, is the most revered musician in Brazil, period. With his gentle whisper and his revolutionary ability to distill the complex rhythms of the samba in a guitar strum, João Gilberto created bossa nova. Sure there were others, and of course, bossa nova needed its great composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim. But Jobim himself was the first to point out, "Without João, there would have been no bossa nova." If her father is a musical king, Bebel's mother is a musical queen. Miucha is one of Brazil's finest singers, and one of only three vocalists to share an entire album with Antonio Carlos Jobim (Elis Regina and Frank Sinatra are the two others.)

Bebel Gilberto says, "My mother deserves all the credit, because she was very important for me, in terms of learning how to sing. My mother was really my first singing teacher. She taught me how to improvise and do vocal harmonizing, since I was a little girl." When Bebel was nine years old, she appeared at Carnegie Hall with her mother and Stan Getz, as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. Around the same time she was appearing on children's television shows in Brazil.

Further enhancing the family tree, Miucha's brother, Bebel's uncle, is the composer-singer Chico Buarque, another revered figure in Brazilian music. All of this may help explain the long delay in the recording of Bebel's first full-length album. As she puts it, "Sometimes it's hard to be an artist in a family of artists." She says, "It's difficult, especially in Brazil. That's one of the reasons that I left Brazil almost 10 years ago. There's a lot of pressure. People look at you expecting a lot from you. It's almost impossible to do something."

The best way to judge someone, of course, is by her abilities. By the time Bebel left Brazil, she had already done plenty of acting, soundtrack work, and guest vocal appearances. Her 1986 debut EP, Bebel Gilberto, led to one of the biggest Brazilian pop hits of the 1980s, "Eu Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo," a Top 10 hit for Marina (and winner of the 1989 Premio Sharp Award for Single of the Year.) Ten years later, another song from that EP, "Mais Feliz," was covered by pop star Adriana Calcanhoto and became a huge hit. Both songs were co-written by the great Cazuza, who, tragically died of AIDS in July of 1990 at the age of 32, before his growing fame could reach outside of Brazil. Bebel calls Cazuza "the most powerful poet of the 80s generation in Brazil."

So, in 1991, Bebel Gilberto moved from Rio, where she grew up, to the city where she was born, New York. There, Bebel began working with such artists as David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, Nana Vasconcelos and Romero Lubambo. She headlined in clubs and at Lincoln Center and appeared in the controversial video for Caetano Veloso's single "Fora Da Ordem." When Arto Lindsay and producer Béco Dranoff sought out fresh voices for the Next Stop Wonderland soundtrack, they teamed Bebel with Vinicius Cantuaria for updated takes on bossa nova classics.