Dora Morelenbaum, CAT Tradicionàrius
By Kit Macdonald
The daughter of the great cellist, arranger and conductor Jaques Morelenbaum and the celebrated jazz singer Paula Morelenbaum, Dora Morelenbaum already looks certain to carry on her family's formidable musical heritage. As a member of the pioneering Latin Grammy-winning quartet, Bala Desejo, she has helped open Brazilian music to new audiences outside of the country, and that's before you get to her parallel work as a solo artist.
In that strand of her musical life, Morelenbaum fuses elements of bossa nova, samba and jazz, and the traditional and the modern in Brazilian music, to delirious effect. Her first solo LP was a live album last year and that was followed last month by Pique, her debut album proper and a collaborative release on the UK's always on-point Mr Bongo Records and Brazil's Coala Records.