Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim: 1927-1994: Musician Biography

Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim: 1927-1994: Musician.

Antonio Jobim was a writer, composer, and arranger whose music spurred a revolution in sound in the late 1950s, both in South America and around the world. Although he modestly credited João Gilberto with creating the bossa nova (new wave), Jobim became its most innovative practitioner, writing nearly 400 compositions. Mark Holston of Americas wrote of Jobim, "As his country's most prolific and successful composer [and] architect of the bossa nova … he had become the personification of modern Brazilian musical expression." The bossa nova craze flourished in the United States during the early 1960s, following the release of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's Jazz Samba and the chart success of songs like "The Girl from Ipanema." "Before his fortieth birthday," wrote Holston, "Jobim had almost single-handedly directed a revolution in popular culture that rippled through the world."