Audiences will share that world on stage with Souza at The Soraya in Northridge on Friday and Saturday night. These concerts will find her singing her album The Book of Longing in its entirety along with other songs from her over 20-year solo recording career.

Souza was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Her career has found her singing standards, Brazilian music and collaborating with classical composers such as Osvaldo Golijov. (She recently performed his work, Oceana, a work written for her, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale.) Attempting to define her by one style or another is a pointless endeavor.

Last week I spoke by phone with Souza about The Book of Longing, her newfound appreciation of silence and about her hope for the future.

Since you first recorded The Book of Longing, an album for which you wrote all the songs using your own poetry or that of others, how has your relationship to the songs and the poems that inspired them evolved?

It’s so interesting. When I make a record it’s a mysterious thing. Two songs have really become more meaningful to me. I haven’t performed Tonight or A Life live. A Life is a poem by Leonard Cohen and Tonight is mine. We haven’t done them live because they haven’t felt good in the sequence. You have to think about sequencing a show, contrast, telling a story. The songs that I have performed that have meant a lot more to me, These Things is one of them. And Paris. Every time I sing them, I’m not saying those because of the melody I wrote, but the words. Every time I sing them I feel differently every time. I want to say every song is that way, but those two songs feel different. 

Much has been made about the quiet nature of The Book of Longing. As a songwriter, poet and singer, how do you find the moments where pauses and silence function to the benefit of the song more than words might?

As I’m writing the music I can control it. When I’m performing live and I’m dealing with jazz musicians, and I think of myself as a jazz singer, the pauses may be longer. I enjoy not knowing and this unexpected thing that will happen; however quiet or loud we go. I think you’ll see that dynamic range in concert. 

In a 2018 interview for melminter.com you said you had been searching for this truth about your work, yourself and how you live. You continue to say it took hitting 50 to get there. What new truths have you discovered since that time?

I think that hitting 50, you just care less about certain things or some things take a difference place or dimension. I used to think for example being on the road was really important. Now that I have a richer  family life with a child, I feel other parts are more important. Community is more important to me nowadays. And my musical community is still really rich. I love silence more than I used to. And slow things. It allows for more introspection and something for me that keeps the mystery and privacy that I crave so much.

Have you started work on a new solo album? If so, how do you follow-up a project like The Book of Longing?

I’m working on a solo project that I hope to release next year. That will be more geared to the Brazilian repertoire. That may change. The Book of Longing was going to have some non-original songs. In talking to Larry (Klein, her producer and husband) he said I should go back and write more. The beauty of having a collaborator like Larry, who understands me and the path of my career, is he can push me into places of discomfort for me and in the end I loved the results of the record. 

You’ve recorded The Book of Chet and The Book of Longing. If fifty years in the future someone recorded The Book of Souza, what do you think that would look and sound like?

I think it would be eclectic. It would be wordless and Brazilian. I don’t know. It  would have music that I would describe as a sense of humanity – how the human voice can  travel to these different places.

Emily Dickinson, whose poem We Grow Accustomed to the Dark inspired one of the songs on The Book of Longing, wrote in Poem 314: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all.” In the chaos that is the world in 2020, where does your hope live and how will that infuse the work you do going forward?

I think we’ve been here in terms of dark times. I know we have. Somehow people shining a light have taken us to a better place. I feel we are in a very dark time and very troubled and a lot of us are alert to that and more are waking up to that. I think we are being told now that we are all of this planet. My hope is that most of us will wake up and look around and take action. For me it might be writing new music, or recycling more or using less and being more conscious about that. More of us will wake up more, see more things and do more.

Photo of Luciana Souza by Anna Webber/Courtesy of lucianasouza.com

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Oceana is a 27-minute work written by Golijov in 1996. The text features the work of legendary poet Pablo Neruda. It is taken from his collection entitled Cantos Ceremoniales.

The orchestration calls for three guitars, harps, orchestra and voice. In addition to the LA Master Chorale members, Luciana Souza, who performed on the original recording of this work, will sing the same part at these concerts.

Argentinian composer Golijov is perhaps best known for his composition, Le Pasíon según San Marco.

Opening the program is the Bruckner Mass. Written around 1867-1868, the work did not have its first performance until 1872. The Mass runs about one hour and is broken up into six different parts: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei.

The work is written for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra with the use of an organ as desired.

In the program notes for these concerts, Artistic Director Grant Gershon says of the two works:

For tickets go here.

Photo of Osvaldo Golijov by Robson Fernandjes/Courtesy of the LA Master Chorale

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Ivan Lins, who will play with both his quartet and his big band, is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and the composer of multiple film scores. His songs have been performed by such artists as Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, Sarah Vaughan, Chucho Valdés, Betty Carter, Nancy Wilson, Kenny Burrell, Toots Thielemans, Manhattan Transfer, and George Benson.

Lins recently joined Dianne Reeves for a concert of Brazilian music in San Francisco. Reeves is working on an album of all Brazilian music.

He also worked on a project called Harlequin where he provided vocals for this 1985 GRP Records release by Grusin and Ritenour. The latter is opening the show with his World of Brazil project.

Of particular interest in that group is vocalist Luciana Souza whose most recent album was The Book of Longing which found her performing with Chico Pinheiro (and Scott Colley.) She has also performed with Romero Lubambo.

In other words, everyone on this stage seems to have worked with everyone at some point in their career. I happen to know that there will be a Lins/Grusin/Ritenouer reunion as part of Wednesday night’s show.

Bring your caipirinhas, your cangas and your carioca spirit and have a great time. Aproveitem!

Read our interview with Ivan Lins here.

For tickets go here.

Photo of Ivan Lins courtesy of Arc Artists.

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