• Samba Pra Juju (2010)
• Living These Times (2009)

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Luciana Souza is a Brazilian jazz singer and composer who has crossed over into classical music. Daughter of poet Tereza Souza and singer-composer-guitarist Walter Santos, she grew up in São Paulo. She is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston from which she received a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Composition. She then received a Master's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.She began her career at the age of three by recording jingles for commercials. She has also worked in the field of European classical music, working with the Bach Akademie in Stuttgart, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, composer Osvaldo Golijov, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. She has been nominated three times for a Grammy Award as best jazz vocalist in 2002, 2003 and 2005. She has appeared and recorded with both renowned jazz musicians and composers of new music, including Danilo Perez, Hermeto Pascoal, Romero Lubambo, Maria Schneider, Kenny Werner, John Patitucci, and Osvaldo Golijov. She currently teaches at the Manhattan School of Music. She is married to music producer Larry Klein.She made a guest appearance on Walter Becker's 2008 album Circus Money, produced by Larry Klein.

Source: Wikipedia

With new CDs, several leading jazz vocalists and instrumentalists focus on points of origin and comfort zones. For Luciana Souza, that means exploring personal roots in fresh musical contexts.

It's become de rigueur to translate pop tunes into jazz vernacular. And Brazilian bossa nova has long been a part of both traditions. But what about treating pop songs as bossa tunes? And who better to tackle that task than singer Luciana Souza. Born in Brazil, the daughter of bossa composers, she's also a graduate of American jazz academies, with degrees from Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. And she's a strong conceptualist, with fine albums of her own design, including two Grammy-nominated projects.

The soft strums of guitarist Romero Lubambo, Ms. Souza's frequent duet partner and countryman, support this bossa-fication of songs written and previously recorded by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen. James Taylor's Never Die Young seems stiff to the form's natural lilt, but most tracks work, showcasing Ms. Souza's confident yet still advancing skills. The least likely song choice, Elliot Smith's cryptic Satellite, ends up the clearest realization of her theme. Far from the aloof trifles that often caricature bossa, Ms. Souza's vocals are direct and always informed by the drama of the lyric. She weaves a narrative about love, romantic and mystical, that reaches its climax with a cleverly syncopated version of the 1966 Beach Boys hit God Only Knows. Larry Blumenfeld, The Wall Street Journal

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Brazilian singer Luciana Souza Spans and Blends South and North American Music

Los Angeles-based Brazilian singer and composer Luciana Souza has a wide-appealing palette of expressive possibilities at her disposal. She sings in Portuguese and beautifully articulated English, seldom heard among native English-speakers, not to speak of the foreign-born. In an interview several... Full Story