Delia Fischer: Beyond Bossa

Delia Fischer, 60 years old with a 40 year career, has an outlier trajectory. A pianist by training, she soon embarked on an instrumental path. Later, she arrived at musical theater. She worked a lot, but there was professional dissatisfaction in the air. This issue was only resolved when she started singing her own songs, which effectively happened in 2010, with "Presente", her second solo album.

The recently released "Delia Fischer Beyond Bossa", her sixth solo, looks like a debut as well. It is the first work of the singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and producer aimed at the international market, all sung in English. It comes to the public through the North American label Origin Records. The making of it was also unusual.

In 2019, Delia released the album "Tempo m'nimo", a work that guaranteed her her first Latin Grammy nomination (for Brazilian music album). At the time, DownBeat magazine, the bible of jazz musicians, gave her five stars for the album. Delia sought out the author of the review, journalist Allen Morrison, to thank him for the recognition.

"Lemon jugglers of Rio"

"He told me that he would like to have an understanding of the songs. At the time, I was already looking for someone to translate my songs into English. I knew that Allen was a musician too, so I proposed the job to him", says Delia.

Some songs kept the original meaning of the recording of "Tempo m'nimo" and others did not. "'Yellow Hearts', for example, talks about jugglers at red lights. Allen wrote the lyrics for 'Lemon Jugglers of Rio' explaining that boys went to traffic lights as an art form," he says.

Delia always believed that this work had to be presented with guests. "I thought it was essential for me to have ambassadors of Brazilian culture present," he continues. The guests are Brazilians who live or have an established careers abroad, and foreigners related to our music.

Singer-songwriter Luciana Souza, who has lived in the US since the 1980s - and is more recognized there than here, with six Grammy nominations - shares "Almost Paradise" with Delia. "She takes a lot of Brazilian music abroad in English and records a lot of composers here." The two end the song in Portuguese.

Overseas Tour

Another undisputed name is Marcos Valle, who shared with Delia (the song is performed in English and Portuguese) the swinging "Workaholic". "For me, it represents the transformation of Brazilian music since bossa nova. What I do has to do with bossa, but also the evolution from it, showing that we have the freedom to do what we want," she continues.

Singer, songwriter and instrumentalist Pretinho da Serrinha joined guitarist Chico Pinheiro in the recording of "The Acupuncture Song". Among the gringos, Delia highlights the Italian Mario Biondi (they shared "Marketplace"), who in 2018 released the album "Brasil", with verses from classics from our songbook, and Gretchen Parlato, a jazz singer who has also recorded a lot of Brazilian music.

With the album released - in the USA, "Beyond Bossa" was also released on CD - Delia hopes for the year 2025 to do a season abroad. Which is not exactly news to her.

Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the artist maintained a partnership with pianist, composer and arranger Claudio Daulsberg, from Duo Fênix, focused on jazz and instrumental. There were two albums with this line-up and participation in European festivals, including Montreux.

Once alone, Delia began to play with many people - Ed Motta, Toninho Horta and Nivaldo Ornellas, among them. It was the phase she calls "sidewoman". She got her first album in 1998, when she was pregnant with her son, Antonio. The album bears precisely his name. "It was still instrumental, but I was already starting to do 'lalala'", she says about the work, produced by Egberto Gismonti.

Gismonti's intention was to take her for a season in Europe, but with a small son, Delia did not go. Time passed and she felt dissatisfied with the direction of her career. She eventually had an unlikely encounter that turned out to be decisive.

Astral influence

"Recommended by a friend, I looked for an astrologer, Cláudia Lisboa. Antonio, at the time, was about 3 years old. I said I was sorry, that I should have been a ballerina. She went to look at my (astral) chart and asked me: 'Do you sing? Do you write lyrics?'. I said no. 'So it's explained why you're sad. He is a person of the word, if he does not express himself through voice and text, he will never be fulfilled'."

Finding it a bit meaningless, Delia still heard from Claudia: "The real artist walks towards a new direction." She left that meeting totally shaken. Six years after meeting Cláudia, Delia was invited to a season in Europe to share the stage with the Dane, Maria Petersen.

At the time, she also started working with musical theater from an invitation made by Ed Motta. There were several productions, such as "Milton Nascimento - Nothing will be like before" (2012), by the duo Cláudio Botelho and Charles Möeller, and "The kiss on the asphalt" (2015), by João Fonseca.

"My career was getting squeezed (between work with the theater)," says Delia, who released some albums from 2010 as a singer. "But it was from 2019 that I understood that it was time to really take care of my career. So much so that 'Minimum Time' talks about precisely that, about this time that we don't control."