Sounds, Dreams & Other Stories A Celebration: 60 Years

These two prolific octogenarians have represented Brazilian jazz royalty for around six decades, so it’s high time for a three-CD, five-LP retrospective of their illustrious careers. Whether recording and/or playing live together or individually, their list of collaborators reads like a Who’s Who. Suffice to spotlight time with Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Simon and Hermeto Pascoal.

Taking its starting point as Flora’s deliciously smoky ‘Jeito Bom de Sofrer’ from 1965 – several years before meeting her future husband, while still immersed in her native Rio’s bossa nova scene – and Airto’s irresistible ‘Papo Furado (Jive Talking)’ from 1971, the compilation ranges across their discographies to 1994 and ‘Hungry on Arrival’, a number recorded by Airto’s South African project, Outernational Meltdown. On tracks like her friend Milton Nascimento’s ravishing ‘From the Lonely Afternoon’, ‘Black Narcissus’ and ‘Summer Night’, Flora’s ethereal voice dances above the music like some diaphanous spirit. If perhaps she symbolises Brazil’s rivers, then Airto is the forest. His first toy was the tambourine-like pandeiro, and his highly individual, multi-textural percussion colours numbers like ‘Celebration Suite’ and the perennial favourite, ‘Toque de Cuíca’. Together they achieve a mandala-like symbiosis on ‘When Angels Cry’. A befittingly essential package.