Rosa Passos March 20, 2005

In her native Brazil, Rosa Passos is known and loved as "a feminine Jo?o Gilberto." For a singer/songwriter who carries the soulful cool of bossa nova into a new age, there can be no higher compliment. Mingling the classics of Gilberto, Jobim, Barroso and other masters of Brazilian song with her own enchanting works, Passos sings in a sweet, warm, totally-in-tune voice that the Los Angeles Times has hailed as "sounding a bit like the legendary Elis Regina but with the rhythmic articulation of Ella Fitzgerald."