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Despite having ten albums to her name Imagina is Allyson’s first devoted entirely to Brazilian music. It is a mixture of songs sung in their original Portuguese, and Brazilian cuts translated into English.

“I like the story-telling quality of singing in Portuguese” she explains. “But I wanted to make this album user-friendly to people who don’t know the language.”

And she succeeds, for the most part ploughing through a range of tones and achieving a mix of melancholy and playfulness in both languages.

She offers up a husky rendition of ‘So Tinha de Ser Voce’ in Portuguese, to sing it any any other language would verge on blasphemy, and an English translation of the old Jobim favourite ‘Desafinado’, or as it is titled here ‘Slightly Out of Tune’.

Gentle piano and Brazil influenced beats run throughout the album but the horns favoured elsewhere are replaced by touches of the accordion and guitar.

A timely release with 2008 marking the 50th year of bossa nova.