Antonio Carlos Jobim: Meditation

This Verve album, Jobims first as leader, was quickly assembled to capitalize on the meteoric success of Girl from Ipanema and Desafinado. Meditation is a simple but nicely balanced tune; covered by talents as disparate as Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra, and Dexter Gordon and Paul Horn, it long ago moved out of the novelty bossa nova category into designation as a jazz standard. In fact, of the dozen songs on this album, probably ten have achieved that status, forming the core group of Jobim classics. The instrumentation here, especially Jimmy Clevelands trombone, is particularly expressive.