(Bossa Nova) Cristina Braga - Samba, Jazz and Love - 2013, MP3, 320 kbps

Perhaps because of her harp, the one word that seems best to describe the music on singer/harpist Cristina Braga’s new album Samba, Jazz and Love is angelic. Her voice is soft and sweet, and if the heavenly seraphim song doesn’t sound like a track from this album, something is amiss in the upper spheres. Put together Braga’s vocals with the trumpet of Jessé Sadoc and Arthur Dutra’s vibraphone in a program of Brazilian music and you’re on a stairway to secular heaven.
For variety, there are some jauntier numbers like “Só Danço Samba” with a real jazz flavor and the album’s last number, “Desde de Que O Samba Ė Samba,” but for Cristina Braga it seems lyricism is always dominant.
While most of the tunes on the set are sung in Portuguese, she does sing Antonio Carlos Jobim’s classic “Desafinado” and two other pieces, the album’s opener “Love Parfait” and the syncopated “Rio Paraiso,” in English. This last is heard in a translation by the singer and her bassist/musical director Ricardo Medeiros.
The harp, horn, vibraphone combination produces some truly ethereal effects. The opening of “Triste de Quem,” the first of the album’s two instrumentals, is electric. Medieiros adds his only bass solo. Jobim’s “Chovendo Na Roseira,” the other instrumental, makes it clear that these are also musicians who can swing when they want to. The interplay between the three is always effective, making these instrumentals some of the highlights of the disc.