Bossa nova is cool and contained. It tells the story, trying to be simple and serious and lyrical. João Gilberto and I felt that Brazilian music had been too much a storm on the sea, and we wanted to calm it down for the recording studio.' Antônio Carlos Jobim
THE MOUNTAINS, THE SUN AND THE SEA: The Art of Antônio Carlos ("Tom") Jobim, comprises the landmark early Brazilian recordings of the composer, spanning the first decade of his career; the historic albums Jobim participated in making and a quantity of his songs - 78s and singles - recorded by popular Brazilian singers of the day. Taking much of his inspiration from nature, Jobim's music has been described as the embodiment of Brazil itself and may be considered a metaphor for the optimism of a nation that was at the time enjoying a brief period of Democracy.
To a Brazilian popular music scene weighed-down by heavily orchestrated melodrama, Jobim's music came as a breath of fresh air, bringing lightness, a deceptive simplicity, space, subtlety and understatement. Whether writing alone, or with partners such as Billy Blanco, Newton Mendonça, Dolores Duran, Luiz Bonfá, or, most fruitfully and enduringly, with the poet Vinicius de Moraes, Jobim was central to a Latin-American musical revolution that would have global implications.
Jobim's musical viewpoint - a lyricism born largely of his love of Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and the music of his fellow-countryman Heitor Villa-Lobos - took form in the early fifties, the trajectory of his career apparent from his first hit, the delightfully breezy Lúcio Alves-Dick Farney duet, Teresa da praia, through the panoramic Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro, a model of artistic collaboration and in its harmonic and melodic properties, a pre-echo of bossa nova; the beautiful songs he wrote for the Orfeu da Conceição theatre production, Jobim's first collaboration with Vinicius, from which emerged the popular “Se todos fossem iguais a você” (Someone to Light Up My Life); and Canção Do Amor Demais, the programme of Tom-Vinicius compositions sung by Elizete Cardoso which represents the transitional stage between samba-canção and bossa nova. On this recording, briefly, for the first time, we hear the guitar of João Gilberto.
In 1959, Chega de saudade changed everything. Produced and arranged by Jobim, the album's twelve songs are the blueprint for bossa nova and the turning point for Brazilian culture. João Gilberto's voice is intimate and serene and he proposed an entirely new approach to the guitar, an audacious refinement of the essentials of the samba rhythm, the irresistible force of 500 percussionists in miniature; a breathtaking act of modernist art.