Fresh from bagging a Grammy last year for Mirror Mirror, her dazzling 2021 album of piano duets with the late Chick Corea and Chucho Valdés, Quietude sees Elias partnering with a trio of exceptional guitarists: Marcus Teixeira, Lula Galvão and Oscar Castro-Neves.

As its title suggests, this exquisite album serves as a showcase for Elias’ characteristically understated vocal approach, one which eschews vibrato, with phrasing that glides over bar lines such that they dissolve away, and with each note dead centred. Written by Carlos Lyra and Vinícius de Moraes and first released in 1961, Elias opens the album with the soul-soothing ‘Você e Eu’. Beautifully accompanied by Teixeira, de Almeida and Johnson, there's a slow-motion take on the Dorival Caymmi samba ‘Marina’, while Elias professed love for the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia is expressed in both ‘Bahia Com H’ and the adroitly worked mash-up of a further brace of Dorival Caymmi songs in ‘Bahia Medley’ (‘Saudade da Bahia/Você Já Foi á Bahia’).

Jobim is represented by two examples from his remarkable songbook, ‘Só Tinha Que Ser Com Você’ (with lyrics by Aloysio de Oliveira) plus ‘Brigas Nunca Mais’ (with lyrics by the aforementioned de Moraes). The late, great Castro-Neves plays exquisitely on a previously unreleased recording of the Haroldo Barbosa/Geraldo Jacques-penned bossa nova, ‘Tim-Tim Por Tim-Tim’, and the album closes with an infinitely touching, gracefully undulating duet version of ‘Saveiros’ featuring its co-composer (with Nelson Motta), Dori Caymmi.