SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- Sérgio Mendes, a Brazilian bossa nova pianist who helped popularize the genre in the 1960s and toured with Herb Alpert and Frank Sinatra, died Thursday, Sept. 5, at age 83, according to confirmed his family on the musician’s social networks.
The artist died “peacefully” in Los Angeles, and in his final moments he was accompanied by his wife and partner. musical for the past 54 years, Gracinha Leporace Mendes, and her children.
The statement did not reveal a cause of death but said the singer’s health had been affected by the effects of the coronavirus.
“Mendes, one of the artists Brazilians The most internationally successful of all time, Mendes recorded more than 35 albums, many of which achieved gold or platinum status. A three-time Grammy Award winner and Oscar nominee, Mendes leaves us an incredible musical legacy spanning more than six decades of a unique sound that he first showcased with his band Brasil ’66,” the text said.
Born in 1941 in Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro, he became a popular pianist at the nightclubs of Rio’s Beco das Garrafas (Bottle Alley), a cluster of venues where artists played the emerging genre of bossa nova while locals threw bottles at troublemakers.
Bossa nova blended the rhythms of Brazilian samba with American jazz. Along with colleagues such as composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, singer-guitarist João Gilberto, lyricist Vinícius de Moraes and guitarist Roberto Menescal, the music captured the city’s sensual beach culture and its youthful, hopeful vibe of the late 1950s and early 1960s — a sound fondly evoked in the 1959 film “Black Orpheus.”
Mendes recorded his first solo album Modern Dance In 1961, a collection of jazz versions by Duke Ellington and Cole Porter alongside Brazilian compositions by Jobim and Gilberto.
He quickly began touring the United States and performed at a legendary concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1962, which introduced bossa nova to a fledgling American audience. That show helped launch the movement into worldwide sensation, with hits like “The girl from Ipanema“Gilberto and Stan Getz” in 1964 would soon become staples of jazz and pop.
He was also world famous for his version of the song “Más que nada” by Jorge Ben Jor, which mixed samba and jazz.
Mendes continued recording throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and in 1983 achieved widespread fame with his adult contemporary version of the song. Never Gonna Let You Goby Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. In 2006, she released the comeback album Timelessproduced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
The album, which featured appearances by Erykah Badu, Q-Tip, Stevie Wonder and Justin Timberlake, mirrored the numerous underground rap records that sampled Mendes’ music.
The Brazilian helped produce the music for the animated films River and River 2and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2012 for “Real in Rio.”
He also won a Grammy for Best World Album for Brazilian in 1992. She continued performing until last year, and her most recent album, In the Key of Joywas published in 2020.
