a nonprofit presenter of jazz artistic and education programs

SFJAZZ Spring Season 2006 • March 17-June 17, 2006

Maria Rita

Saturday, May 13 • 9pm


  • $75
  • $60
  • $47
  • $37
  • $25
    • “The biggest phenomenon to hit Brazilian popular music in years.”—The New York Times

    The daughter of the late, legendary Brazilian singer Elis Regina, Maria Rita won two Latin Grammy Awards for her self-titled 2003 debut CD and sold out her SFJAZZ debut concert in spring 2004. Now an international singing star in her own right, with an “intimate but spare sound (and) warm, sensual, jazz-inflected voice” (The New York Times), she returns to SF with a brand-new CD to her credit, the aptly titled Segundo (“Second”).

    Ginny Rubin & Dick Warmer

     

    Program Notes

    As the daughter of the late, great Elis Regina, whom many Brazilians regard as that country’s greatest female singer of the last 50 years, and of Cesar Camargo Mariano, the distinguished jazz and pop pianist, arranger and composer, Maria Rita [Mariano] is heiress to one of Brazil’s most illustrious musical dynasties.


    Born in 1977 in São Paulo, Maria Rita was just four years old when her mother died. She spent several of her formative years, from age 16 to 24, in the USA. Majoring in Latin American studies and communications at New York University (in preparation for a career in journalism), she came to music slowly, her tastes tending toward American jazz-based singers Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole and funk bands like Earth, Wind and Fire. For years, she wrestled with self-doubt about her singing ability.


    ‘’There was always a lot of pressure, from the time I was a girl of eight or ten,” Maria Rita told The New York Times, “from people saying that I had to sing, and it never was clear to me why I had this obligation... I was still quite young, so without really understanding my mother’s place and where I fit in relation to this mythical figure, every time they said to me that I had to sing, I took a step backward, away from all of that.’’


    In time, though, music came to play a more and more prominent role in her life, and in 2001, she returned to Brazil to launch a singing career. In 2003, she released a self-titled debut CD, which went on to win two Latin Grammys. The New York Times hailed her as “the biggest phenomenon to hit Brazilian popular music in years,” and she went on to sell out her first SFJAZZ concert in spring 2004. She makes a triumphant return to San Francisco with a sparkling new CD to her credit, the aptly titled Segundo (“Second”).

    — Matthew Campbell

     
    Maria Rita vocals
    Tiago Costa piano, keyboards
    Sylvinho Mazzucca acoustic bass
    Cuca Teixeira drums
    Da Lua percussion