Ivan Lins

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Latin Grammy Award winner Ivan Lins is one of Brazil’s most celebrated artists. His compositions have been recorded by countless international jazz and pop luminaries, making him the second most recorded Brazilian composer (behind Antonio Carlos Jobim) in history.

Lins, a self-taught pianist since the age of eighteen, was greatly influenced by jazz and bossa nova. In the 1960s, while finishing his degree in industrial chemical engineering, he participated in music festivals. His first breakthrough as a composer happened with the song “Madalena” (by Ivan Lins and Ronaldo Monteiro), recorded by the acclaimed Brazilian singer Elis Regina. In the 1970s, Lins hosted the TV show Som Livre Exportação and, along with songwriters Gonzaguinha and Aldir Blanc, he made the recordings that would launch his career abroad. Some of Lins’s greatest hits are “Love Dance,” one of the most recorded songs of the last thirty years, and “The Island.” Other notable Lins compositions include “Abre Alas,” “Somos Todos Iguais Nesta Noite,” and “Começar de Novo.”

Ivan Lins’s songs have been recorded hundreds of times, by artists such as Quincy Jones, George Benson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen MacRae, Barbra Streisand, and many more.

Hugely popular in his native Brazil, Ivan Lins can write charming songs of such harmonic subtlety that some have hailed him as the successor to Antonio Carlos Jobim.

—Guardian (United Kingdom)

The most gifted Brazilian songwriter since Antonio Carlos Jobim and Milton Nascimento, his harmonically rich, melodically compelling songs easily reach across cultural and national boundaries.

—Los Angeles Times