Niterói

Zélia Duncan , born Zélia Cristina Gonçalves Moreira, is a Brazilian singer and composer. Zélia was born in Niterói, in the... state of Rio de Janeiro. She moved with her family to Brasília, where she lived for 16 years. She started her professional career in 1981 after she won a contest organized by the Fundação Nacional de Artes . When she was 22 years old, she returned to Rio. Using the name "Zélia Cristina", she first performed as a soloist in Botanic in Rio de Janeiro. In 1990 she launched the LP "Outra Luz" , and she began performing in cities like São Paulo, Florianópolis, and Porto Alegre and participating in tv shows. In late 1991, she accepted an offer to go play in the United Arab Emirates. She stayed there for 5 months, returning to Brazil in May 1992. It was in this year that she recorded a track in the songbook of Dorival Caymmi, and she also adopted the name Duncan, the maiden name of her mother. In 1994, she launched her first CD, Zélia Duncan, and two years later she recorded Intimidade , which made her spend a season in Europe and Japan.
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Sérgio Santos Mendes is a Brazilian musician. He has over fifty-five releases, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. He was... nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2012 as co-writer of the song "Real In Rio" from the animated film Rio. Mendes is married to Gracinha Leporace who has performed with her husband since the early 1970s. He has collaborated with many artists through the years, including the Black Eyed Peas, with whom he re-recorded a version of his original breakthrough hit "Mas Que Nada". The child of a physician in Niterói, Brazil, Mendes attended the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late-1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was emerging. Mendes played with Antonio Carlos Jobim and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil. Mendes formed the Sexteto Bossa Rio and recorded Dance Moderno in 1961.
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