'Urubu (1978) is a single 1978 album that includes English translations of the Portuguese lyrics and lush, intriguing Claus Ogerman arrangements. This is a revelation for all classical music lovers and it shows that in some other time Jobim would probably be a very serious classical music composer, making symphonies that would now be performed in operas all around the world. That's right, a symphonic orchestra, arranged and conducted by great Claus Ogerman makes you feel like listening to Mahler, Ravel or Debussy, a real impressionistic image of how great composer Jobim sees his homeland. If you listened to this recording on conventional 12' record player, after turning the record you'd be really suprised, because from the other side a real symphony begins. The final ballad Angela concludes this part. Then follows very jazzy version of Ligia and somewhat more conventional Correnteza in which Jobim also cites himself at the end where he uses phrase from Estrada Branca - This Happy Madness. Excerpts from this wonderful song later appear in Jobim's soundtrack for the film Gabriela and also in the song of the same name from albums Passarim and Rio Revisited. Listening to this masterpiece, the one feels like being placed somewhere in Amazona rain forrest listening to the strange sounds comming from the weird animal life of South America. Most surprising of all Jobim's albums this one recorded in US in 1975 brings the spirit of the 70's in it's opening song Bôto in which Jobim seem to use all possible Brazilian sounds, starting from berimbao, various percussions and whistling, backed up by electric piano, strings and strong 70's based arrangement with a lot of flutes and beautiful voice of Miucha.

Tom jobim urubu