“Dance of Time is inspired, deftly musical, and truly accessible to a wide range of listeners from jazz to pop to Brazilian music. It’s virtually flawless.” ****

View the full review here.

Eliane Elias: Dance of Time review – sultry vocals, scintillating piano

Spontaneity … the Brazilian singer and pianist Eliane Elias

As a vocalist, the Brazilian Eliane Elias radiates as much starry smooth-jazzy hipness as Diana Krall, but as an improvising pianist she’s in a different league: a wellspring of polished bebop lines and skittish flourishes. Jazz hardliners might shy away from the purr of her sultry vocal sound, but the smart thing about this reappraisal of her long career is that her piano spontaneity coaxes and illuminates the music at every turn. Elias’s trumpeter ex-husband Randy Brecker and Steps Ahead vibraphone partner Mike Mainieri are in the lineup, and the songs embrace jazz standards, Brazilian classics and poignant originals such as the dreamy Little Paradise. Elias is scintillating on the João Gilberto vehicle O Pato, and turns Kurt Weill’s Speak Low into a Latin glide with Brecker’s flugelhorn curling through it. Her duet with veteran Brazilian singer-songwriter Toquinho on Not to Cry (Pra Não Chorar) makes a resonant finale, not least because Toquinho half-wrote it for her when she was 18, and it took this memorable session for them to complete it.

John Fordham 

Thursday 23 March 2017

Billboard kicks off Carnival with an exclusive premiere of a track from the Brazilian jazz pianist and singer’s upcoming album.

Eliane Elias’ new album Dance of Time celebrates the centennial of  samba — and the rhythm of Brazilian carnival.

“Samba is the most authentic and contagious dance rhythm of Brazil,” says the celebrated jazz pianist and singer. “And there is no better place in the world to capture this music. I just had to be in Brazil to make Dance of Time.”

Click here for more

LOS ANGELES – There are two kinds of samba. There is the rough, rootsy street music of early samba greats like Cartola, from samba’s golden age between the 1920s and the 1950s, and there is the softer, lyrical and more musically complex style developed since and is constantly revolving. The undisputed master of the latter is the legendary GRAMMY-winning pianist, singer, composer and arranger Eliane Elias, whose upcoming March 24, 2017 Concord Jazz label CD called Dance of Time, reminds us why samba and Brazilian music has endured commercially for well over 100 years.

Two years after seducing fans with her GRAMMY-winning Made in Brazil (Best Latin Jazz Album), Eliane was back in the studios in New York and her native Brazil to work on Dance of Time. Eliane’s style of samba owes a great deal to choro, a slower, jazz and tango influenced style of samba that emerged in the 1930s. It extended range of instruments and beyond the traditional percussion, guitar, and cavaquinho (a miniature guitar with a sound like a picked banjo) to take in the piano, flugelhorn, and trumpet.

According to a press release issued by Concord Jazz Records, “…With the presence of extraordinary guests including pianist Amilton Godoy plus singer-songwriting guitarists João Bosco and Toquinho—from Brazil—along with trumpeter Randy Brecker, vibraphonist Mike Mainieri and singer Mark Kibble—from the United States, Dance of Time celebrates certain people who were integral in Elias’ early artistic journey in both Brazil and the U.S. “I wanted to include musicians who were very important in the start of my career,” Elias says. “Dance of Time represents the spectrum of my career from the very beginning until now.”

The album is beautifully played and contains beautifully arranged classics, contemporary samba, and its quality shows up much current samba to the delight of those who like their samba with a rush! Dance of Time alternates between slower, choro-influenced sambas (O Pato, You’re Getting To Be A Habit With Me, Copacabana) and a more upbeat, good time dance numbers of the style known as samba-cancao (By Hand-Em Maos, An Up Dawn, Coisa Feita) both are marked by Eliane’s lyrical genius.

One of the things I greatly admire about Eliane is that she always – literally always – shows respect and reverence to her native culture and Brazilian (samba) music. On many occasions a lot of Brazilian artists and non-Brazilian artists betray the rich and lively roots of samba with the increasing obsession with Carnival as a tourist spectacle. With Dance of Time, Eliane stays true to those spiritual roots and marked yet again a triumphant return to record a Brazilian national treasure.

By Danny R. Johnson
San Diego County News’ Jazz and Pop Music Critic

View article here

Eliane Elias’ Made In Brazil is Grammy winner for Best Latin Jazz Album.

Eliane’s most current album, “Made in Brazil” has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the “Best Latin Jazz Album” category!

Read About the Grammy Nomination here in this article from JORNAL OPÇÃO.

Eliane’s most current album, “Made in Brazil” has been nominated for a Latin Grammy Award in the “Best Engineered Album” category!

“Made In Brazil” continues to crest, riding the wave as the #1 Best Seller on the Brazilian Music and Jazz Charts for 16 + weeks!

Made in Brazil reaches #1 on iTunes, #1 on Amazon.com and debuted at #3 On Billboard Traditional Jazz Chart, USA. It also topped the charts in France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and other countries. Congratulations to Eliane and the whole team!