While growing up in Rio, Villela soaked up music of her native Brazil while falling asleep at night to the sounds wafting over from the samba school behind her grandmother’s house. Not long after her move to California, Villela started singing with the Stanford University Chorus, and then joined the De Anza College Jazz Singers. Eventually she won a scholarship that enabled her to study with the great jazz vocalist Sheila Jordan at the Manhattan School of Music.
Inspired by Brazilian songwriters, composers and multi-instrumentalists such as Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento, Villela draws on a vast range of Brazilian traditions, from samba and bossa nova to the carnival groove partido alto, and baião.
Developing a distinctive synthesis of jazz and Brazilian musical forms, she began attracting attention from musical heavy weights like tenor sax titan Michael Brecker, bass virtuoso Harvie Swartz and revered Brazilian guitarist Toninho Horta, who all play on her 1996 album Supernova. The same year, her album Asa Verde earned a nomination for Jazz Singer of the Year by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors (NAIRD). 2003 marked the release of InverseUniverse, a program of dazzling original pieces created with her longtime collaborator, Rio-born guitarist Ricardo Peixoto. She followed this effort with a 2004 duo session featuring piano guru Kenny Werner, DreamTales.
While growing up in Rio, Villela soaked up music of her native Brazil while falling asleep at night to the sounds wafting over from the samba school behind her grandmother’s house. Not long after her move to California, Villela started singing with the Stanford University Chorus, and then joined the De Anza College Jazz Singers. Eventually she won a scholarship that enabled her to study with the great jazz vocalist Sheila Jordan at the Manhattan School of Music.
Inspired by Brazilian songwriters, composers and multi-instrumentalists such as Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento, Villela draws on a vast range of Brazilian traditions, from samba and bossa nova to the carnival groove partido alto, and baião.
Developing a distinctive synthesis of jazz and Brazilian musical forms, she began attracting attention from musical heavy weights like tenor sax titan Michael Brecker, bass virtuoso Harvie Swartz and revered Brazilian guitarist Toninho Horta, who all play on her 1996 album Supernova. The same year, her album Asa Verde earned a nomination for Jazz Singer of the Year by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors (NAIRD). 2003 marked the release of InverseUniverse, a program of dazzling original pieces created with her longtime collaborator, Rio-born guitarist Ricardo Peixoto. She followed this effort with a 2004 duo session featuring piano guru Kenny Werner, DreamTales.
