This will allow me to direct funds and awareness to causes that
Posted in General on 02. Sep, 2010
“This will allow me to direct funds and awareness to causes that I care deeply about.”
Few female performers have Streisand’s pulling power. Her 1993-4 tour grossed nearly $60m (£33m) with tickets selling even then for as much as $350. The two concerts in New York six years ago sold tickets worth $14.4m.Cities and dates for the new tour have not yet been set. Donations from its proceeds will be distributed by her charitable Streisand Foundation, which also helps fund Aids research, race relations programmes in the US as well as various civil liberties projects.. He is one of the biggest names in Brazilian music, he’s sung with Frank Sinatra and performed for two American presidents. But this month, Sergio Mendes may achieve one ambition that has eluded him throughout his long career At 64, he is set for British singles chart success. Forty years after his first single, “Mas Que Nada”, became the first Latin pop song to make the American charts, a new version recorded with the Black Eyed Peas, the Californian hip-hop band is being tipped as a hit in Britain.
The soundtrack to the current Nike advert, the single is doing well on iTunes without any marketing and the digital release will be followed by the physical release on Monday week. Mendes’ record label, Universal, are confidently predicting a top- five charts success.
Evidence for this optimism can be seen at the box office at the Barbican in London, where a concert on 23 July – Mendes’ first performance in Britain since 1980 when he opened for Frank Sinatra at the Royal Albert Hall – is already sold out It seems Sergio Mendes is back in vogue “Isn’t that great?” he said in London yesterday “For this to happen now, at this time. It’s never too late to start!”The involvement of the Black Eyed Peas is crucial to the new phase in Mendes’s remarkable career. Band member Will.i.am, has been a fan of the bossa nova star’s music since childhood and asked Mendes’s record label to put him in touch. Though the Brazilian knew nothing about the Black Eyed Peas despite living in America since before they were born, he agreed.”I opened my door and there’s Will standing with a lot of my old records, old vinyls, in his hands.
He grew up in Los Angeles listening to my music and said my music had influenced him a lot and that he was a big fan I was very touched by that,” Mendes recalled. “I saw this young kid who knew the old records and started talking very knowledgeably about Brazilian music. He invited me to play a song on his album and I really enjoyed the experience.”Mendes says he found the marriage of his Brazilian music with elements of rap and hip-hop “really interesting” and they agreed to work together again.Will asked a number of his friends, from John Legend to Stevie Wonder and Justin Timberlake, to appear as special guests alongside Mendes and his second wife, Gracinha, and the resulting album, Timeless, was released in the UK in April. The single of “Mas Que Nada” is taken from it.Mendes seems genuinely thrilled to be finding a new audience and professes a real love of rap and hip-hop. “It’s great that a whole new generation is listening to the music For me it’s very rewarding,” he said. “It was wonderful working with Will and I hope we’ll do a second album.”Yet the sound of urban America is a long way from Mendes’ roots.
The son of a doctor, he grew up in Niteroi, a small town across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. “It was a middle-class life, easy days with the piano and football and the beach. It was a very calm little town where we went to the beach every day and the movies at the weekend.”He studied classical music from the age of seven but never intended to have a career as a musician. “My father was a doctor and he wanted me to be a doctor also, so the piano was my symbol of rebellion Music was my passion.”It was to become his life.