Flora Purim

Brazil's Flora Purim is a jazz singer with a wide octave range who has achieved international fame leading her own bands, in partnership with her husband Airto Moreira, in a group called Fourth World and as a contributor to concerts and recordings by a great many top jazz artists such as Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie and Lawson Rollins. Jazz Review called her "Queen of Brazilian jazz" with a "seductive and playful" voice.

Born into a musical family, she began to sing professionally in the early 1960s and late in the decade she became the lead singer for the Quarteto Novo, led by Hermeto Pascoal and Moreira. After they married, Purim and Moreira moved to America in 1967 and joined the electric jazz wave. Together, they toured Europe with saxophonist Stan Getz and pianist Gil Evans and then joined Chick Corea's band Return to Forever, which played fusion jazz. After two albums with Corea, Purim made her solo debut in 1973 with 'Butterfly Dreams'.

More albums followed through the '70s and she performed on two Grammy Award-winning releases, with Dizzy Gillespie and the United Nations 'Live at Royal Festival Hall' in 1990 and 'Planet Drum', made by former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. With Moreira she spent time with the Latin jazz band Fourth World, which produced five albums including 'Fourth World Recorded Live at Ronnie Scott's' in 1992 and a one-month stint at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London kicked off her own world tour in the late '90s with the album 'Speed of Light'. She continues to perform and, in 2002, she was honoured with Brazil's Ordem do Rio Branco for Lifetime Achievement.