In the vibrant city of São Paulo, Brazil, Eliane Elias was born amid the rhythms and melodies that would shape her destiny. Raised in a home where music was not just a passion but a way of life, her journey into the world of jazz began at the age of seven, igniting a flame that would burn brightly throughout her illustrious career.

Today, she stands as a beacon in the jazz realm, revered by a devoted following that spans the globe. With a prolific discography boasting 31 albums, her musical odyssey has traversed continents, culminating in recent accolades at the Grammy and Latin Grammy awards for her 2021 collaborative album Mirror Mirror, which includes duets with luminaries Chick Corea and Chucho Valdés. This May, Elias makes her much anticipated India debut at the NCPA.

The Brazilian artiste recalls the time she made her teacher well up when she had begun studying piano. Elias says in an email interview, “My teacher would sometimes cry when I played as a young pupil at age seven. I remember telling my mom that I didn’t want to study piano anymore because the teacher cried at my lessons. My mom tried to explain to me that I had a special talent and that the teacher was affected by my playing.” The kind of playing, as the teacher would go on to define later, that “revealed a certain sensitivity and evoked a spirit that was startling in a child.” Fast forward to now when Elias considers the piano a “deeply connected extension” of her mind, heart and body. She adds, “I don’t feel any technical encumbrances interfering with whatever I want to express.”

At home, Elias’s mother and grandmother were both very musical. “My mom played classical piano and loved jazz pianists. She acquired a large collection of jazz recordings and I fell in love with the music, especially the pianists. I was transcribing solos of my favourite pianists by age ten and entered the best school of music in São Paulo, CLAM, at 13. I was deep into my studies and by the time I was 15, I was teaching at CLAM.” Elias would go on to study at The Julliard School of Music in New York.

In terms of gaining deeper learning, Elias picked up the Scriabin Prelude & Nocturne for the Left Hand, so that she could have more independence as an artiste. She adds, “The transcriptions I did of jazz pianists like Red Garland, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, etc., got me deep inside the rhythmic inflections and feel for swung eighth notes.”

While the piano has become a natural fit for Elias, there is also Elias the vocalist. Albums in which she has sung in addition to playing the piano, like Dreamer (2004) and Something for You (2008), have been lauded especially, winning awards in Japan. By her own admission, she says the focus of the first 20 years of her career was on instrumental music, composing and playing the piano. However, Elias did sing vocalese and put out songs with lyrics on her first album, Amanda, released in 1985 with American trumpeter Randy Brecker.

She says, “I established myself first as a pianist. In my early recordings, I used the sound of the voice as a different colour in the music as though it was another instrument. The transition from wordless vocals to singing lyrics happened gradually, starting in the early nineties and culminated in 1998 with the album Eliane Elias Sings Jobim. Since then, my recordings and live shows have really blended my pianism with my singing.”

As Elias began singing more during her live performances, a new bridge emerged between her and her audiences. The artiste says she could see that her listeners were connecting in a meaningful way when she sang. Plus, it opened the door to including much more repertoire for her concerts. “Things just kind of happened as an evolution over time with the underlying motivation of truly wanting to give the most complete and enriching musical experience that I could,” she says.

Meanwhile, the evolution of her understanding of the piano led her to find new meaning even after decades at it. “I developed a technique that took into consideration the piano as a string instrument as well as the percussive instrument that it is,” Elias says.

As recently as 2022, Elias and her band performed on the famed NPR Tiny Desk Concert, enchanting listeners the world over with dexterous, detailed and powerful renditions of songs like ‘At First Sight’, ‘An Up Dawn’ and ‘The Time is Now’. At the NCPA, Elias will be joined by her regular quartet of musicians—bassist Marc Johnson, guitarist Leandro Pellegrino and drummer Rafael Barata. The audience can expect to hear music spanning her entire career, including tunes from her multi-award-winning album, Mirror Mirror, and her latest work, Quietude, which is focused on the voice. “I promise you it will be a very uplifting musical experience,” Elias says. As for the bigger picture, her vision is fairly straightforward. She adds, “I expect to keep doing what I’ve been doing; making recordings and touring with one ensemble or another.”

An artiste who has been performing music most of her life, Elias says she doesn’t worry too much about where her next gig will take her. “I feel blessed to have been given a certain talent for music and I have worked very hard and continue to dedicate myself to my art and craft. I truly love bringing music to audiences and so I continue touring despite what’s going on in the world,” she says.

Offering a different perspective on why music must go on and reach people even in the midst of troubled times, Elias says, “In every epoch throughout history there has been danger in some form or another, either from war or pestilence or disease, etc. We have to carry on and strive to make this a better world.”