It"s only kind of mumbled rather than spelled out in the brief liner notes, but this compilation of Antonio Carlos Jobim covers isn"t a wholly 100-percent Brazilian production. It seems to have been conceived as a tribute of sorts to Jobim, recorded in or around 2004 in Silverdown Studios in the United Kingdom, using a house band. That band was wholly comprised of musicians with distinctively non-Brazilian names such as Allan Cox, Peter Murray, Paul Morgan, Simon Morton, and Hugh Burns (the last two both played guitar and did the arrangements). The rotating cast of featured singers could well be Brazilian, true, given their names (Xavier Osmir, Simao Morto, Grupo Cabana, Paula Santoro, and Gustavo Marques), though the liner notes don"t say a word about them. So it seems like a bit of a contrived product, and not one that"s preferable to recordings by Jobim himself, or to the best of the many interpretations of Jobim"s music that were recorded in the decades prior to the making of this album. For all that, however, this really isn"t that bad, and certainly doesn"t sound notably less "Brazilian" than similar records either made in Brazil or featuring more musicians of Brazilian descent. The band work over Jobim"s songs -- including some of his most famous, such as "The Girl from Ipanema," "How Insensitive," "Desafinado," "Corcovado," and "Once I Loved" -- with smooth elegance, and the singers interpret them competently, though not with overwhelming personality or originality. It might be enough for listeners with an ultra-casual taste for bossa nova, but consumers with any initiative should seek out better and more definitive versions of this important music. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide