Paul Popa is back at my health retreat, and I requested that he accompany me in a song that I have been working on, and he agreed. He never played it before, and this song has a lot of chord changes. So what talent on his part to be able to just sit down and spontaneously do it.
The song is How Insensitive by the great Brazilan musician and composer, Antonio Jobim. It is claimed to be based loosely on Fredric Chopin's Prelude # 4, and I can hear the resemblance. Of course, Chopin didn't know anything about Bossa Nova.
The song came out in 1963, and it quickly became a Bossa Nova jazz standard, played all over the world. It has been covered by numerous artists in the latin music field and beyond. I'm especially fond of the versions by the female vocalists, such as Astrud Gilberto, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and more recently by the beautiful and gifted Andrea Motis from Spain. But, Frank Sinatra also did a beautiful rendition with Antonio Jobim himself playing the guitar. "Tom" Jobim, as he was known, was extremely gifted. He could also play the piano beautifully. I saw and heard him provide piano accompaniment to The Girl from Ipanema, which is also his song, and the intricate chords he played on that piano- it was rich; incredibly rich.
But now, here is our rendition of How Insensitive with much thanks to Paul Popa.
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