Keys to the three Americas.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Pianist Elaine Elias - Includes selected discography

Through a two-decade career that has produced a dozen critically acclaimed albums and has taken her from Brazil's largest city to the jazz mecca of the world, pianist Eliane Elias has never strayed far from the inspiration of her earliest and most profound influences, the sultry bossa nova rhythms and haunting melodies of her homeland and the improvisational panache and surging energy of modern jazz. Now, she's added a decidedly pan-American flavor to her repertoire, experimenting with styles from throughout the hemisphere on her recent album, The Three Americas.

In conceiving the recording, Elias, now a resident of New York City, sought to achieve an organic blend of music from North, South, and Central America. "I got into rhythms I hadn't really explored before," she admits. "For instance, this is the first time I've played a tango on one of my albums, although I had been very exposed to tangos and Argentine music because of extensive touring there when I lived in Brazil. The song "Chorango," which started as a Brazilian chorinho before evolving into a tango, is the first tango I've composed, and it was really fun."

The pianist's fun was just beginning as she started to explore the stylistic riches of Brazil's Spanish-speaking neighbors. "There's no doubt that there is a tendency for musicians in Brazil to stay within the Brazilian culture," she reflects, "because there are so many different rhythms and such a variety of styles."

Indeed, the somewhat aloof attitude many Brazilians maintain about their culture is given credence by a surplus of world-class composers, musicians, painters, and writers. The somewhat haughty disposition of Brazilians is further enhanced by the singularity in the Americas of their Portuguese tongue, the sheer size of their nation, and the physical isolation of its major population centers from neighboring countries. "Yes, living in Brazil, it's easy to have a closed mind about most things that are outside of the country," she says.

So, The Three Americas was a refreshing change of pace for the pianist and composer. "After I wrote the first several tunes," she recalls, "I realized that the music was traveling within cultures from throughout the Americas. But whenever I work in these other styles," she adds, "I do it in a very careful way. My way of performing works based on styles other than jazz or Brazilian is to not reproduce the authenticity of those rhythms, but to create something new that represents and...