Paulinho da Costa

Paulinho da Costa (Portuguese pronunciation: [pawˈliɲu da ˈkɔʃtɐ], born Paulo Roberto da Costa on May 31, 1948) is a Brazilian percussionist born in Rio de Janeiro, considered one of the most recorded musicians of modern times. He has participated in thousands of albums, with Down Beat magazine naming him "one of the most talented percussionists of our time." He was an artist on Michael Jackson’s Grammy Award-winning Thriller, Madonna's True Blue, Celine Dion’s Let's Talk About Love, hit singles and movie soundtracks, including Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Dancing and Purple Rain and others. He has also toured with Diana Krall. He plays over 200 instruments professionally, and has worked in a variety of music genres including Brazilian, blues, Christian, country, disco, gospel, hip hop, jazz, Latin, pop, rhythm and blues, rock, soul, and world music. He was signed to Norman Granz’s Pablo Records for three of his solo albums, Agora, Happy People and Sunrise, as well as Breakdown on A&M Records. Da Costa is the recipient of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ “Most Valuable Player Award” for three consecutive years. He is also the recipient of the honorary “Musicians Emeritus Award.

Paulinho

Paulinho is a diminutive name in the Portuguese language.

It is frequently used as a nickname of various people named Paulo (Paul -inho, the little Paul). In this case it is often combined with an epithet, sometimes a demonym referring to their place of origin, to distinguish them from other people with the same nickname, as shown in several of the following examples:

Music

Portuguese sportsmen

Cycling

Football

Futsal

Brazilian sportsmen

Football

Costa

Costa may refer to:

Lee Ritenour

Lee Mack Ritenour (born January 11, 1952) is an American jazz guitarist, session musician, and composer. Ritenour has contributed to over 3000 sessions, and has charted over 30 contemporary jazz hits since 1976.

Biography

Ritenour was born January 11, 1952 in Los Angeles. He has maintained a delicate balance between the individual creative vision and the group dynamic, since the beginning of his career. Lee played his first session when he was 16 with the Mamas & the Papas and given the moniker, "Captain Fingers", because of his manual dexterity on the guitar. Ritenour was a sought-after session guitarist by the mid-1970s, and won Guitar Player magazine's Best Studio Guitarist twice in the 1970s. He is noted for playing his red Gibson ES-335 and his Gibson L5 guitars. Since his early recordings in the 1970s, Lee has held numerous #1 spots on guitar polls, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian SJ Awards, and a prestigious "Alumnus of the Year" Award from the University of Southern California. He has recorded more than 40 albums that have yielded 35 chart songs. As a young guitarist, he put his combination of diverse musical styles and brilliant technical chops to work on more than 3,000 sessions with a broad spectrum of artists, and was a founding member of Fourplay, which is considered the most successful group in contemporary jazz. His prolific career includes a Grammy Award for the collaborative work Harlequin (1985), and 19 Grammy nominations. Ritenour also holds the distinction of having two of the promotional videos for his songs "Is It You" and "Mr. Briefcase" being played during MTV's first day. Ritenour has been at the top of many guitar polls throughout the world.

Melody Gardot

Melody Gardot /ɡɑːrˈdoʊ/ (born February 2, 1985) is a Grammy-nominated American singer, writer and musician in Philadelphia. She has been influenced by such blues and jazz artists as Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Stan Getz and George Gershwin as well as Latin music artists such as Caetano Veloso. Her music has been compared to that of Nina Simone.

Gardot follows the teachings of Buddhism, is a macrobiotic cook and humanitarian who often speaks about the benefits of music therapy. She has visited various universities and hospitals to speak about its ability to help reconnect neural pathways in the brain, improve speech ability, and lift general spirits. In 2012, it was reported that she had given her name to a music-therapy program in New Jersey. Gardot considers herself a "citizen of the world".

Early life and education

Gardot was born in New Jersey, and was largely brought up by her grandparents. Her grandmother was a Polish immigrant, and her mother, a photographer, worked and traveled frequently. They moved around often and as a consequence had very few possessions, often living out of suitcases. Because of Gardot’s career, she does not stay in one place for long and she finds herself living out of three suitcases, as she did when she was a child.