Princeton’s Stanley Jordan Teams Up With Legendary Samba Singer
Virtuoso jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan, who graduated from Princeton University, has teamed up with the legendary Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento on a cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 1958 “Meditation,” the lead single of Jordan’s new Feather in the Wind album.
The teenaged Jordan first heard the tune in 1976 on Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer album with Nascimento and Herbie Hancock. “That album was deeply moving for me,” Jordan remembers, “and very inspiring. That’s when the seed for this project was planted, because that’s when I first dared to dream that Milton and I would collaborate someday. This recording was made in 2014 at a boutique studio in the heart of Minas Gerais, Brazil, nearly four decades after that seed was sown.”
To recreate the authentic bossa-nova feel of samba, Jordan enlisted a “Brazilian Dream Team,” as he says, of bassist Dudu Lima, producer Ricardo Itaborahy and drummer Ivan Conti. “We had a lot of history together,” says Jordan of Conti, “having traveled and performed throughout Brazil.” Known as Mamao in his internationally acclaimed fusion band Azymuth, Conti died at 76 in 2023. Nascimento, 83, is now retired.