Saying good-bye to Antonio Carlos Jobim.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Brazilian composer and singer

When the tragic news reached Brazil that perhaps the greatest figure in the history of Brazilian music had unexpectedly died in a New York hospital, editors at the country's major newspapers were quick to look to the music Antonio Carlos Jobim had spent his life creating to find the best way to express the nation's collective sense of loss.

"It's the end of the road," headlined Jornal do Brasil, quoting lyrics from "Aguas de margo" [Waters of March], a major hit for the composer in the early 1970s.

Two days later, after Jobim's body had been returned to Brazil with great ceremony and buried at Rio de Janeiro's Sao Joao Batista Cemetery, Jornal do Brasil summed up the sad event by quoting for another headline the title of a song Jobim had written three decades earlier: "All That's Left Is to Say Good-bye." Ironically, the composer's final recorded work (done for an album by singer Itamara Koorax) carries the same title."We lost the greatest," says Rio-based producer and critic Arnaldo de Souteiro, a longtime friend and admirer who produced Jobim's last recording session just days before his death.

Characteristic of the busy and productive life he had led, Jobim's final months were accompanied by a whirl of activity that helped define the many sides of his artistic personality.

In New York, he had begun to collaborate with Ettore Stratta, conductor of London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, to plan an album of his lesser-known, classically oriented works that would be sung by opera diva Kathleen Battle. In Rio, the film Erotique by director Maria Magalhaes opened, accompanied by a soundtrack scored by Jobim and his son Paulo, including two new compositions by the maestro. In Japan, an album by British singer Salina Jones, featuring Jobim's hits and instrumental accompaniment, joined the swollen ranks of album by artists throughout the world who have been drawn, as though hypnotized, to his work for almost half a century.

His latest album, titled simply Antonio Brasileiro, became available in Brazil just one week before his death. The recording features new works, such as his tribute to classical composer Radames Gnattali, "Meu amigo Radames," and updated versions of old hits like "So danco samba," which Jobim arranged to include a quote from one of his favorite North American songs, big band leader Stan Kenton's "Intermission Riff."

And just about everywhere on the planet someone was listening to his recently recorded duet with Frank Sinatra...