Flora Purim

Infobox musical artist
Name = Flora Purim

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Instrument = Voice
Genre = Jazz
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Flora Purim (born in March 6 1942 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian jazz singer known mainly for her work in the jazz fusion style. She became prominent for her part in Chick Corea's landmark album "Return to Forever". She has recorded and performed with many artists, including Stanley Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jaco Pastorius, and her husband Airto Moreira.

Biography

Purim's parents were both classical musicians, her Russian father on violin and her mother on piano [http://www.sescsp.org.br/sesc/revistas/subindex.cfm?paramend=1&IDCategoria=2364] . Flora discovered American jazz when her mother played it while her husband was out of the house. [http://www.melt2000.com/page.html?chapter=0&id=28 Melt2000: Flora Purim (bio)] ]

:"She would bring home those 78 vinyl RPMs and when my father was at work, she would play them. That was how I got exposed to jazz music. Basically listening to Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. But also a lot of piano players, such as Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner, those were my mother's favorites." [http://www.jazzreview.com/articleprint.cfm?ID=1202 Beatrice Richardson for Jazz Review interviews Flora Purim - Queen of Brazilian Jazz] ]

Purim began her career in Brazil during the early 1960s. During this period, she made a recording, titled "Flora M.P.B.", in which she sang bossa nova standards of the day by Carlos Lyra and Roberto Menescal. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000091447 The Queen of Fusion Returns, by Mark Holston for Americas (magazine) Volume: 53. Issue: 4. Publication Date: July 2001. Page Number: 60. COPYRIGHT 2001 Organization of American States; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group] ] Later in the 1960s, Purim was lead singer for the Quarteto Novo, led by Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira.

While in her twenties, Purim mixed jazz with radical protest songs to defy the repressive Brazilian government of the day. A 1964 military coup in Brazil led to censorship of song lyrics, and she later commented about this period of her life as follows: "I wanted to leave Brazil. There's a river there called the San Francisco River. I used to sing to the river, that, as it flowed out to the ocean, it would take me to America."

Shortly before leaving Brazil, Purim and Airto Moreira married. The resulting musical as well as personal relationship is now in its fifth decade. Around 1971, their daughter Diana was born. In 1998, Diana married Krishna Booker, son of jazz bassist Walter Booker, nephew of saxophonist Wayne Shorter and godson of pianist Herbie Hancock. [http://www.lamusicacademy.com/departments/vocals/instructors.asp LA Music Academy instructors] ] Diana later described life with her parents as " [growing] up on the road traveling the world like a gypsy".

Arriving in New York in 1967 [http://www.florapurim.com/bio.htm Flora's Bio] ] , Purim and Moreira became immersed in the emerging Electric Jazz. They toured Europe with Stan Getz and Gil Evans. In 1972, alongside Stanley Clarke and Joe Farrell, they were, for the first two albums, members of Chick Corea's fusion band Return to Forever. In 1973 Purim released her first solo album in the United States "Butterfly Dreams". It was well received, and soon thereafter "Down Beat"'s reader's poll chose her as one of the top five jazz singers. Purim also worked with Carlos Santana, Mickey Hart, and [Janis Joplin] ???? Joplin dead in 1970 ??? ] at outdoor festivals, and on jazz and classical albums through the 1970s. In the early 1970s, Purim was arrested and briefly incarcerated for cocaine possession.

Throughout the 1970s, Purim released a string of albums for the Milestone Records label.

In the 1980s Purim toured with Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra culminating with Gillespie's Grammy winning album "United Nations Orchestra" released in 1992, and then in the 1990s sang on Grammy winning album for Mickey Hart, the former Grateful Dead drummer. Later in the 1990s Purim released her own album and world tour "Speed of Light" starting with a month at Soho's Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club with a new band with contributions from Billy Cobham, Freddie Ravel, George Duke, David Zeiher, Walfredo Reyes, Alphonso Johnson, Changuito, Freddie Santiago, and Giovanni Hidalgo, with important writing and performing contributions from Chill Factor and her daughter Diana. The new millennium saw the release of two recordings, "Perpetual emotion" and a crossover homage to one of Brazil's great composers, "Flora sings Milton Nascimento". In 2005, she reunited with her old Return to Forever bandleader, Chick Corea. [http://flora_purim.mondomix.com/en/portrait2864.htm Mondomix - Amérique Latine > Brazil > Flora Purim, Portrait of] ] As of 2007, Purim is still actively touring, performing in Ankara, Istanbul, Manila, and Jakarta. [ [http://www.florapurim.com/tour.htm Flora Purim, Airto Moreira and Band: Tour Info] ]

One of Purim's major musical influences is the Brazilian Hermeto Pascoal. [ [http://www.florapurim.com/stories.htm Stories to Tell, My Greatest Creative Influences] ] She has said that Pascoal "play [ed] the Hammond B3 organ, flute, saxophone, percussion, and guitar. He is one of the most complete musicians that I ever met." He also helped train her voice. She also owes a great debt to Chick Corea, discovering the fusion jazz style for which she is best known when Corea asked her to add vocals to some recordings of his compositions.

Purim has a rare six octave voice, a faculty she shares with Mariah Carey [ [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20020127/ai_n9710211 "Mariah's Hideaway" Sunday Mirror, 27 January 2002 by Richard Beetham] ] , Bobby Brown [ [http://www.thesoundprojector.com/exc_sp1_american.html#Brown The Sound Projector, 1st Issue, Section: American Monsters Avant-garde geniuses of the USA, The Enlightening Beam of Axonda] ] , Yma Sumac, and Taborah Johnson. [ [http://www.taborah.com/press_room.html Taborah Johnson Press Releases] ] Her vocal style is influenced by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald which drifts from lyrics to wordlessness without ever losing touch with the melody and rhythm. She expanded her vocal repertoire during early tours with Gil Evans. While touring the world for three years with Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra in the 1980s, she broadened her repertoire to include traditional mainstream jazz, bebop, and doing numbers in 4/4 time instead of the traditional Brazilian 2/4 beat.

Purim has confided that in recent decades "There are two albums that are at my bedside. They are "Miles Ahead", the first collaboration between Miles Davis and Gil Evans and "Blow by Blow", by Jeff Beck. They are with me every night."

Faith

Purim's mother is Brazilian. Her father is a Ukrainian who emigrated to Brazil via Russia. Purim is also the name of the annual Jewish festival commemorating the deliverance of the Jews from a Babylonian plot to exterminate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. Hence Flora Purim presumably has Jewish ancestry through her father. She also adheres to the Bahá'í Faith thanks in large part to Dizzy Gillespie. In 2002, Purim said that Gillespie (who died in 1993) is

:"...still a part of my life. If you ever come to my house, there are pictures of him all over my walls... [While touring] he would sit in the back of the bus with me for several hours telling life stories about his family and things that happened to him. He took the time to sit with me and show me with his hands where one was, so if I ever wanted to go into another level of jazz positions I could go into it. I loved him not just for that, but I loved him also because he gave me a lot of insight and spirituality, he even gave me his praying book... One day, when we were on the airplane going to Australia, he said to me, "I want you to have this." Then I said to him, "If you give me your praying book how are you going to pray?" He told me he knew every prayer in the book by memory. I didn't believe it. So he challenged me to open the book on any page and ask him to tell me the prayer of the page. So I opened the book and he asked me what prayer was that, and I said the Traveler's Prayer. He asked me which number it was, and then I told him it was the number 3, and he recited the entire prayer. I quizzed him on another prayer and again he blew me away. He knew every single prayer of that book. So I asked him what was his religion and he told me he had been a Bahá'í for thirty years. I asked him what was the philosophy of Bahá'í religion and he said among other things, is the oneness of mankind, universal peace upheld by a world government, equality between men and women, mandatory education for all children of the world and a spiritual solution to the economic power. I was impressed."

Awards

* 4-time winner Down Beat Magazine's Best Female Jazz Vocalist [http://www.berkeleyagency.com/html/flora.html Flora Purim and Airto, Berkeley Agency] ]
* 2-time Grammy nominee for Best Female Jazz Performance
* Performed on 2 Grammy-winning albums -
**Gillespie's "United Nations Orchestra" (Best Jazz Album)
**Hart's "Planet Drum" (Best World Music Album)
* In September 2002, Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso named Purim and Moreira to the "Order of Rio Branco", one of Brazil's highest honors for those who have significantly contributed to the promotion of Brazil's international relations.

Discography

As leader

*1973: "Butterfly Dreams" (Milestone Records)
*1976: "Open Your Eyes You Can Fly" (Milestone Records)
*1977: "Encounter" (Milestone Records)
*1977: "500 Miles High" (live) (Milestone Records)
*1978: "That's What She Said" (Milestone Records)

As contributor

*Chick Corea and Return to Forever - "Return to Forever" (1972)
*Chick Corea and Return to Forever - "Light as a Feather" (1972)
*Carlos Santana - "Welcome" (1973)
*Hermeto Pascoal - "Slaves Mass" (1976)
*P.M. Dawn and Airto – "Red Hot + Rio" - "Non-Fiction Burning" (1996)

References

External links

*
* [http://www.florapurim.com/bio.htm Bio] on the Flora Purim Official Website.
* Europe Jazz Network Musicians, [http://www.ejn.it/mus/purim.htm Flora Purim.]
* Berkeley Agency, [http://www.berkeleyagency.com/html/flora.html Flora Purim and Airto]
* Mondomix - Amérique Latine > Brazil >, [http://flora_purim.mondomix.com/en/portrait2864.htm Portrait of Flora Purim.]
* Holston, Mark, [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000091447 The Queen of Fusion Returns.]
* [http://www.jazzhistorydatabase.com/collections/scrapbook-photos3.html?zoom_highlight=flor+purim New England Jazz History Database - Photos]