Flora Purim

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flora Purim was born in Rio de Janeiro, March 6, 1942. She is a Brazilian jazz singer known mainly for her work in jazz fusion. She received her fame on Chick Corea's 1972 album, Return to Forever and recorded with many artists through the decades of her career, including Stanley Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie, Jaco Pastorius, and her husband, Airto Moreira.

1 Musicality
2 Awards
3 Background
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Musicality

Purim was raised with classical music as both of her parents were classical musicians - her violinist father had classic music as the standard in the home though her pianist mother played American jazz while he was away.^[1] "She would bring home those 78 vinyl rpm's and when my father was at work, she would play them. That was how I got exposed to jazz music. Basically listening to Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. But also a lot of piano players, such Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner, those were my mother's favorites."^[2]

Purim released a very early album in the early 1960's in Brazil called "Flora M.P.B.", where she interpreted classic bossa nova tunes standard in Brazil by Carlos Lyra and Roberto Menescal.^[3] Later in the 1960's Purim was lead singer for the Quarteto Novo, co-lead by Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira^[1]. Arriving in New York in 1967^[4], she and recently married Moriera became immersed in the development of Electric Jazz groups and toured Europe with Stan Getz and Gil Evans.^[1] Chick Corea asked her for some vocal additions to some fusion jazz compositions^[2] which established her main style.^[2] In 1973 Purim released her first solo album in the United States “Butterfly dreams” which was well received (first nomination by Down Beat Magazine as one of America’s top five jazz singers.) Purim worked with Carlos Santana, Mickey Hart, and Janis Joplin at outdoor festivals and on jazz and classical albums^[1] through the 1970's. In the 1980's Purim toured with Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra culminating with Gillespie's Grammy winning album "United Nations Orchestra" released in 1992, and then in the 1990's sang on Grammy winning album for Mickey Hart, the former Grateful Dead drummer. Later in the '90's Purim released her own album and world tour "Speed of Light" starting with a month at Soho's Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club with a new band with contributions from Billy Cobham, Freddie Ravel, George Duke, David Zeiher, Walfredo Reyes, Alphonso Johnson, Changuito, Freddie Santiago and Giovanni Hidalgo with important writing and performing contributions from Chill Factor and Purim and Moreira's daughter Diana Booker.^[4] The new millennium saw Purim's “Perpetual emotion” and the crossover homage to one of Brazil’s greatest composers called “Flora sings Milton Nascimento”. In 2005, she reunited with Chick Corea as part of the Return to Forever band.^[5]

Among Purim's musical qualities, such as her Portuguese native language and other Brazilian influences, is her fairly rare six octave voice - a quality shared with the likes of Mariah Carey^[6], Bobby Brown^[7]and Taborah Johnson.^[8] Among her creative musical influences are Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal and the well known Chick Corea^[9]. Pascoal "play[ed] the organ Hammond B3, flute, saxophone, percussion and guitar. He is one of the most complete musicians that I ever met" and helped her train her voice.^[1] Corea asked her to try to create vocals to fusion jazz compositions of his in the early 1970's. Her style of vocalizations are influenced by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald^[5] which drifts from following lyrics to wordlessness without ever losing touch with the melody and always in rhythm^[1], and expanded her vocal repertoire during early tours with Gil Evans.^[1] While singing for three years with Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra in the 1980's and touring the world, she learned of various styles of American jazz and evolved her musical style from just fusion jazz to adopt traditional mainstream jazz and bebop and 4/4 beat vs traditional Brazilian 2/4 beat.^[2]

[edit] Awards

4-time winner Down Beat Magazine's Best Female Jazz Vocalist^[10]
2-time Grammy nominee for Best Female Jazz Performance^[10]
Performed on 2 Grammy-winning albums - ^[10]
- Gillespie's "United Nations Orchestra" (Best Jazz Album)
- Hart's "Planet drum” (Best World Music Album)
In September of 2002, Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso named Purim and Moreira to the "Order of Rio Branco", one of Brazil's highest honors for those who have significantly contributed to the promotion of Brazil's international relations.^[4]

[edit] Background

Purim's father is a Ukrainian^[1] though emigrated through Russia.^[4] Her mother is Brazilian.

In her twenties Purim's music mixed jazz with radical protest songs in defiance of the repressive regime of the time.^[1] With the 1967 military coup in Brazil, and the rigid system of lyrical censorship made her wish for, and then emigrate to, the United States. "…I wanted to leave Brazil. There's a river there called the San Francisco River. I used to sing to the river, that, as it flowed out to the ocean, it would take me to America."^[10] Shortly before leaving Brazil Purim and Moreira married and they have had a married and professional relationship through more than forty years. Their daughter Diana Booker (since married to Krishna Booker, son of jazz bassist Walter Booker, nephew of saxophonist Wayne Shorter and godson of pianist Herbie Hancock)^[11] was born about 1971-2. In the early 1970's Purin was arrested for cocaine possession with a brief incarceration.^[3] From the 1970's through the 1990's Purin was on nearly continuous band tours or working on albums. Her daughter describes it as she "grew up on the road traveling the world like a gipsy".^[11] In 2007, Purim is still actively touring - going to Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey, Manila, Philippines, Jakarta, Indonesia, Washington D.C., Boston, MA, and New York, NY.^[12]

In recent decades "There are two albums that are at my bedside," she confides. "They are "Miles Ahead", the first collaboration between Miles Davis and Gil Evans and "Blow by Blow", by Jeff Beck. They are with me every night."^[3]

Purim while this artist's last name is also a joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of all the Jews from a Babylonian plot to exterminate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. Through her father's name and probable Jewish heritage with this last name, she is of Jewish extraction, but a member of the Bahá'í Faith^[1]since at least 2002 thanks in large part to Dizzy Gillespie. Purim says in 2002 that Gillespie, who died in 1993, is "still a part of my life. If you ever come to my house, there are pictures of him all over my walls.… [While touring] he would sit in the back of the bus with me for several hours telling life stories about his family and things that happened to him. He took the time to sit with me and show me with his hands where one was, so if I ever wanted to go into another level of jazz positions I could go into it. I loved him not just for that, but I loved him also because he gave me a lot of insight and spirituality, he even gave me his praying book.… One day, when we were on the airplane going to Australia, he said to me, "I want you to have this." Then I said to him, "If you give me your praying book how are you going to pray?" He told me he knew every prayer in the book by memory. I didn't believe it. So he challenged me to open the book on any page and ask him to tell me the prayer of the page. So I opened the book and he asked me what prayer was that, and I said the Traveler's Prayer. He asked me which number it was, and then I told him it was the number 3, and he recited the entire prayer. I quizzed him on another prayer and again he blew me away. He knew every single prayer of that book. So I asked him what was his religion and he told me he had been a Bahai for thirty years. I asked him what was the philosophy of Bahai religion and he said among other things, is the oneness of mankind, universal peace upheld by a world government, equality between men and women, mandatory education for all children of the world and a spiritual solution to the economic power. I was impressed."^[2]