About this Artist

Guitarist, singer, composer, and two-time Grammy Award-nominee DORI CAYMMI was a musical prodigy from an early age. He taught himself the fundamentals, and his early musical influences included people like Antônio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto. At age 17, Caymmi began composing music for Brazilian TV and over the years, he became one of the country's most respected arrangers and composers, working with his mentors, Jobim and Gilberto, as well as contemporary Brazilian jazz artists like Milton Nascimento.

A rich, sonorous voice which sings passionately of the archetypal, natural images it knows so intimately; a masterful ear for rhythms which ebb and swell with the singular syncopation of the Brazilian tradition; and powerful, practiced fingers which glide and alight along the frets of a guitar with knowing grace and ease are the talents Dori Caymmi calls on to create a lush musical illustration of his native Brazil.

Dori was born into a legacy of musical achievement from his father, Dorival, one of the foremost composers in Brazil. He learned by listening, as his childhood home was frequented by many musical greats, and the sounds of the world came through the radio to him: the staccato scat of Ella Fitzgerald, the smooth swing of Frank Sinatra, and the sweet soul of Sarah Vaughan. Growing up in this atmosphere, it was only natural that Dori should pursue a musical path, moving from rote piano lessons at the Conservatory to more experimental, learn-by-doing hours with the guitar, and ultimately to all-encompassing producing and arranging. Dori has brought his unique, multi-national flavorings to the recordings of musical luminaries all along the spectrum from the Latin jazz of Sergio Mendes to the English pop of Paul Young.

On his 1999 Zebra Records debut, Cinema: A Romantic Vision, Caymmi showed once more that there is never a shortage of musical ideas when it comes to his unique ability to fuse popular music and jazz with Brazilian melodies and rhythms.