This week, Daniela Soledade launches a ‘samba soul journey’

Just last month, a large, downtown St. Pete nightclub breathlessly advertised an upcoming concert performance this way: BOSSA NOVA QUEEN DANIELA SOLEDADE.

“That caught me off guard,” laughs the Brazilian-born singer, who doesn’t claim to be any such thing. “I told the band, ‘I didn’t say that, guys.’ It was pretty funny.”

(It was a great show, anyway, and very nearly a sellout.)

Bossa nova combines airy acoustic guitar with intimate vocals – melodic and breezy, words whispered, caressed. It’s tropical, it swings and it sways, and it’s intensely romantic, especially when it’s sung in the original Portuguese.

Soledade, who began performing in the bay area five years ago, may not be actual royalty, but she’s certainly the real deal in bossa nova circles. Her grandfather, Paulo Soledade, co-wrote with musical pioneers Antonio Carlos Jobim, Toquinho, Baden Powell and others. Her father, singer, guitarist and violinist Paulinho Soledade, is also internationally renowned.

Daniela Soledade’s debut album displays her mastery of classic samba and bossa nova … and highlighting the pristine clarity of her vocals.

Downbeat Magazine, 2019

Soledade’s musical (and otherwise) partner is St. Petersburg guitarist Nate Najar. Together as a duo, in small combos with a full band, Dani and Nate perform bossa nova, samba (a little more rhythmically intense Brazilian music) and jazz. Over the past year, they’ve traveled extensively throughout the South; in June, they performed in Rio de Janeiro (where they were joined by Paulinho) and recently returned from a sold-out run of dates in California.

Saturday (Aug. 26), they’ll be at their second home, the Palladium Theater’s Hough Hall, for a concert Soledade has named Deco Tropical.

“We call it ‘a samba soul journey to paradise,’ because it brings the samba and the bossa nova, but now we’ve also added a soul component to it,” she explains. “So the repertoire is different; it’s a brand new show.”

This concert, she promises, is “full of surprises.” Along with bossa nova and samba, it will explore the two musicians’ earliest rhythm and blues influences. Tasty stuff. “Grown folks’ music,” Najar calls it.

“Because a lot of the same people come to see us at different times, I like to mix things up,” Soledade explains. “I don’t like to play the same show over and over again – I want everybody to continue to be engaged, and I want them to hear something new every time they come out.”

Joining Soledade and Najar will be bassist Joe Porter and pianist Patrick Bettison, members of the couple’s regular bay area band. Brazilian musicians Claudio Infante (drums) and Zé Luis (flute and saxophone) will round out the ranks.

“These two guys used to be in a band with my dad, when they were in their early 20s,” Soledade reports. “This is really cool ‘cause they’re family.” This week’s band also includes backup singers Rebecca Pearl, Samantha Jones and Fernanda Brenneman.

During the week, they’ll all be recording Soledade’s third album (following A Moment of You and Pretty World). Like its predecessors, this new collection is being produced by Najar.

“Nate,” observes Soledade, “is brilliant in everything he does. A musician and a producer. He’s brilliant in every way because he always has the broad view, the big picture of how things work. And how he believes things should be, for us to do certain things.

“And honestly I trust him fully. Nate is probably the single most important component of this operation.”

Soledade says she never takes the support she receives from bay area audiences for granted.

“I come from a very different, very specific set of circumstances, coming from Rio with the family of musicians that I have. It’s a lot of fun to give continuation to this heritage, and to the lineage of my family.

“And to my culture, really. To me it’s just an honor.”

Find Palladium tickets here.