Antonio Carlos Jobim

Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927–1994), Tom to everyone, was a composer, pianist and arranger, born in Tijuca and brought up in Ipanema, in Rio de Janeiro.

He studied piano as a boy, with Hans-Joachim Koellreutter among his teachers, and listened to Pixinguinha, Debussy and Ravel. In the 1950s he played in the bars and nightclubs of Copacabana and worked as an arranger for the record labels. In 1956 he began to write with the poet Vinicius de Moraes, for the play Orfeu da Conceição, whose film version, Orfeu Negro, came out in 1959.

In 1958 João Gilberto recorded Chega de Saudade with the guitar beat that gave the new music its shape, and the record of the same name followed in 1959, with Desafinado among its songs. Jobim played at Carnegie Hall in 1962. Garota de Ipanema, written with Vinicius that year, reached the world on Getz/Gilberto, recorded in New York in March 1963 and released in 1964, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1965.

Wave came out in 1967, with Claus Ogerman’s strings, the same year as his record with Frank Sinatra; then Stone Flower in 1970 and Águas de Março in 1972. In 1968 his Sabiá, with words by Chico Buarque, won the Festival Internacional da Canção in Rio. Elis & Tom, with Elis Regina, was recorded in Los Angeles in 1974. From the 1980s he played with the Banda Nova, and in 1987 he made Passarim.

He died in New York on 8 December 1994, aged 67, three days before his last record, Antonio Brasileiro, came out. Rio’s international airport carries his name.

This is a demo site, a tribute built to show what a musician’s page on TJP can hold. Its nights are the demo’s own.