Flora Purim - Biography

Flora Purim (born March 6, 1942 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian jazz singer known primarily for her work in the jazz fusion style. She became prominent for her part in Chick Corea's landmark album Return to Forever. She has recorded and performed with numerous critically acclaimed artists, including Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jaco Pastorius, and her husband Airto Moreira.

In 2002, Purim was the recipient of one of Brazil's highest awards; the 2002 Ordem do Rio Branco for Lifetime Achievement.

Biography

Purim's parents were both classical musicians, her Romanian-born father played violin and her Brazilian mother was a pianist. Flora discovered American jazz when her mother played it while her husband was out of the house.

"She would bring home those 78 vinyl RPMs and when my father was at work, she would play them. That was how I got exposed to jazz music... basically listening to Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. But also a lot of piano players, such as Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner, those were my mother's favorites."

Purim began her career in Brazil during the early 1960s. During this period, she made a recording, titled "Flora e M.P.M.", in which she sang bossa nova standards of the day by Carlos Lyra and Roberto Menescal. Later in the 1960s, Purim was lead singer for the Quarteto Novo, led by Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira.

After reaching young adulthood, Purim mixed jazz with radical protest songs to defy the repressive Brazilian government of that time. A 1964 military coup in Brazil led to censorship of song lyrics, and she later commented about this period of her life as follows: "I wanted to leave Brazil. There's a river there called the San Francisco River. I used to sing to the river, that, as it flowed out to the ocean, it would take me to America."

Shortly before leaving Brazil, Purim and Airto Moreira married. Around 1971, their daughter Diana Booker was born. By 1998, Diana married Krishna Booker, son of jazz bassist Walter Booker, nephew of saxophonist Wayne Shorter and godson of pianist Herbie Hancock. Diana later described life with her parents as "[growing] up on the road traveling the world like a gypsy".

Arriving in New York in 1967, Purim and Moreira became immersed in the emerging Electric Jazz. They toured Europe with Stan Getz and Gil Evans. In 1972, alongside Stanley Clarke and Joe Farrell, they were, for the first two albums, members of Chick Corea's fusion band Return to Forever, which released first a self-titled album, Return to Forever, in 1972, followed the same year as Light as a Feather; both which received glowing reviews. In 1973, Purim released her first solo album in the United States, titled, Butterfly Dreams. It was well received, and soon thereafter she was chosen by the Down Beat reader's poll as one of the top five jazz singers. Purim also worked with Carlos Santana, Mickey Hart, and Janis Joplin at outdoor festivals, and on jazz and classical albums through the 1970s. In the early 1970s, Purim was arrested and briefly incarcerated for cocaine possession.

Throughout the 1970s, Purim released a string of albums for the Milestone label. She and her husband Airto were also involved with the Uruguayan band Opa (which means "hi", but just in Uruguay), Flora collaborated in vocals in the band's second album Magic Time, and in return, Opa played in "Corre Niña" in Flora's album, Nothing Will Be as It Was...Tomorrow. (Warner Bros. Records)

In the 1980s Purim toured with Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra culminating with Gillespie's Grammy Award-winning albumUnited Nations Orchestra released in 1982, and then in the 1990s sang on Grammy Awardwinning album for Mickey Hart, the former Grateful Dead drummer. Later in the 1990s Purim released her own album and world tour, Speed of Light starting with a month at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho with a new band with contributions from Billy Cobham, Freddie Ravel, George Duke, David Zeiher, Walfredo Reyes, Alphonso Johnson, Changuito, Freddie Santiago, and Giovanni Hidalgo, with important writing and performing contributions from Chill Factor and her daughter Diana. The new millennium saw the release of two recordings, Perpetual emotion and a crossover homage to one of Brazil's great composers, Flora sings Milton Nascimento. In 2005, she reunited with her old Return to Forever bandleader, Chick Corea. As of 2010, Purim is still actively touring.

Through the 1990s, Purim worked on a number of broader projects. One of such was a heavy Latin jazz group called "Fourth World", which in addition to herself consisted of her husband Airto Moreira, Gary Meek, Gary Brown, Jose Neto and Jovino Santos Neto. They would release a number of albums and 12" singles; "Fourth World", "Encounters With The Fourth World", "Last Journey" and an album featuring remixes to their songs by several popular electronic DJ's from around the world called Return Journey. The band's last album release was in 2000.

In 1996, Purim and her husband Airto collaborated with P.M. Dawn on the song "Non-Fiction Burning" for the AIDS-Benefit Album Red Hot + Rio produced by the Red Hot Organization.

One of Purim's major musical influences is the Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal. She has said that Pascoal "play[ed] the Hammond B3 organ, flute, saxophone, percussion, and guitar. He is one of the most complete musicians that I ever met." He also helped train her voice. She also owes a great debt to Chick Corea, discovering the fusion jazz style for which she is best known when Corea asked her to add vocals to some recordings of his compositions.

Purim has a rare six octave voice, a faculty she shares with Mariah Carey, Bobby Brown, Yma Sumac, and Taborah Johnson. Her vocal style is influenced by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald which drifts from lyrics to wordlessness without ever losing touch with the melody and rhythm. She expanded her vocal repertoire during early tours with Gil Evans. While touring the world for three years with Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra in the 1980s, she broadened her repertoire to include traditional mainstream jazz, bebop, and doing numbers in 4/4 time instead of the traditional Brazilian 2/4 beat.

Purim has confided that in recent decades "There are two albums that are at my bedside. They are Miles Ahead, the first collaboration between Miles Davis and Gil Evans and Blow by Blow, by Jeff Beck. They are with me every night."

Faith

Purim's mother is Brazilian. Her father, Naum Purim, is Romanian. who emigrated to Brazil from the Russian Empire. Purim is also the name of the annual Jewish festival commemorating the deliverance of the Jews from a Babylonian plot to exterminate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. Hence Flora Purim presumably has Jewish ancestry through her father. She also adheres to the Bahá'í Faith thanks in large part to Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie's death in 1993 prompted Purim, in 2002 to comment on his influence, saying that [he was]:

"...still a part of my life. If you ever come to my house, there are pictures of him all over my walls... [While touring] he would sit in the back of the bus with me for several hours telling life stories about his family and things that happened to him. He took the time to sit with me and show me with his hands where one was, so if I ever wanted to go into another level of jazz positions I could go into it. I loved him not just for that, but I loved him also because he gave me a lot of insight and spirituality, he even gave me his praying book... One day, when we were on the airplane going to Australia, he said to me, "I want you to have this." Then I said to him, "If you give me your praying book how are you going to pray?" He told me he knew every prayer in the book by memory. I didn't believe it. So he challenged me to open the book on any page and ask him to tell me the prayer of the page. So I opened the book and he asked me what prayer was that, and I said the Traveler's Prayer. He asked me which number it was, and then I told him it was the number 3, and he recited the entire prayer. I quizzed him on another prayer and again he blew me away. He knew every single prayer of that book. So I asked him what was his religion and he told me he had been a Bahá'í for thirty years. I asked him what was the philosophy of Bahá'í religion and he said among other things, is the oneness of mankind, universal peace upheld by a world government, equality between men and women, mandatory education for all children of the world and a spiritual solution to the economic power. I was impressed."

Awards

• 4-time winner Down Beat's Best Female Jazz Vocalist
• 2-time Grammy nominee for Best Female Jazz Performance
• Performed on 2 Grammy-winning albums -
  • Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra (Best Jazz Album)
  • Hart's Planet Drum (Best World Music Album)
• In September 2002, Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso named Purim and Moreira to the "Order of Rio Branco", one of Brazil's highest honors for those who have significantly contributed to the promotion of Brazil's international relations.

Discography

As leader

• 1964: Flora e MPM" (RCA Brasil)
• 1973: Butterfly Dreams (Milestone)
• 1974: 500 Miles High" (Milestone Records)
• 1974: Stories To Tell (Milestone Records)
• 1976: Open Your Eyes You Can Fly (Milestone Records)
• 1976: Encounter (Milestone Records)
• 1977: Nothing Will Be as It Was...Tomorrow (Warner Brothers)
• 1978: Everyday Everynight (Warner Brothers)
• 1978: That's What She Said (Milestone Records)
• 1979: Carry On (Warner)
• 1988: The Midnight Sun (Virgin)
• 1992: Queen of the Night (Sound Wave)
• 1995: Speed of Light (B&W Music)
• 2000: Flora Purim sings Milton Nascimento (Narada)
• 2001: Perpetual Emotion (Narada)
• 2003: Speak No Evil (Narada)
• 2005: Flora's Song (Narada)