Tonight's program will be announced from the stage. Cal Performances is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency that supports the visual, literary, and performing arts to benefit all Americans, and by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Cal Performances would like to thank The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Zellerbach Family Fund for their generous support.
Few nations take their music and musicians as seriously as does Brazil.
Not content to be the world's largest supplier of coffee, home of the globe's most vast rain forest expanse, and dominant force on the soccer field, this South American nation also demonstrates unceasing brilliance as a cultural super power. At the age of 14, when she first began to dream of a career in music, Marisa Monte aspired to follow in the footsteps of an early idol, opera diva Maria Callas. At the age of 18, she was off on a self-financed trip to Italy to study classical singing. It was while abroad, able to view for the first time the cultural riches of her homeland from afar, that the young singer changed her artistic focus and set her sights on joining the MPB ranks. Although superficially influenced by such storied Brazilian vocalists as the late Elis Regina and Gal Costa, with whom she particularly shares some striking stylistic similarities, Monte clearly boasts her own well-defined, highly individual imprint.