Astrud Gilberto was born
Astrud Weinert the daughter of a Brazilian mother and a German father in the state of
Bahia, Brasil, and was raised in
Rio de Janeiro. In 1959, she married
João Gilberto, later emigrating to the U.S. in 1963, when she sang in the influential
Getz/Gilberto of João Gilberto,
Stan Getz, and
Antonio Carlos Jobim. She had never performed professionally, and sang in the recordings at the suggestion of her husband, João Gilberto; they divorced in the mid-sixties.
Astrud Gilberto's successful singing of
The Girl from Ipanema established her as a jazz singer. In 1964, Gilberto appeared in the films
Get Yourself a College Girl and
The Hanged Man. Her first solo album was
The Astrud Gilberto Album (1964), which was nominated in "album of the year" category for a NARAS Grammy award. Gilberto began as a singer of
bossa nova and American
jazz standards, but recorded her own compositions in the 1970s. Her repertoire includes
The Shadow of your Smile,
It might as Well be Spring,
Love Story,
Fly Me to the Moon,
Day by Day,
Here's that Rainy Day, and
Look to the Rainbow. She has recorded songs in Brazilian Portuguese, English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Japanese.
In the late sixties, early seventies, she recorded the
Number One to the Sun Eastern Airlines series of television adverts, becoming the airlines voice for years.
For years, Astrud Gilberto did not sing in night-clubs out of stage fright; the audience's closeness intimidated her; she sang only in theatres. To overcome that, she studied acting at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting; in 1982 she resumed singing at night clubs. Subsequently, paradoxically, Gilberto has broken the attendance record of clubs, such as "Fat Tuesdays" and SOB's, in NYC, and "The Jazz Café" in London.
In 1982 Astrud Gilberto's son Marcelo Gilberto joined her group, and toured with her for more than a decade, as her groups bassist. In addition to working as a bassist, Marcelo collaborated was co-producer of the albums
Live in New York (1996) and
Temperance (1997). Son Gregory Lasorsa (also a musician) played in the
Temperance album, playing the guitar on her
Beautiful You song, which features singer
Michael Franks.
