Also this issue:

Diesel Dork
Anti-folk hero Adam Brodsky returns from touring with a new CD and an all-star cast to play the release party.
-M.J. Fine

Back Again
Singer/actor Jimi Mooney's punk-princess alter ego finds love as Helen Back.
-A.D. Amorosi

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
-Sam Adams

The Slats
-Patrick Rapa

Brother JT
-Brian Howard

Billy Joe Shaver
-Sam Adams

The Swords Project/ The Gloria Record
-A.D. Amorosi

DJ Nights
-Sean O'Neal

November 27-December 3, 2002

musicpicks

Luciana Souza

With the lissome largesse of Cassandra Wilson's and Maria Bethania's introspective tendencies, composer/singer Luciana Souza holds the key to soft-spoken literary-yet-emotive bossa-jazz Braziliana. Born in Brazil's São Paulo, Souza became the toast of the American music scholastic system (degrees from New England Conservatory of Music and Berklee College of Music) then turned her complex compositional chops into The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop and Other Songs and, more recently, Brazilian Duos (Sunnyside). In tandem with guitarists Marco Pereira, Walter Santos and Romero Lubambo (who joins her live), Souza's warm, understated voice is perfectly at home capturing the sotto voce tones of her native bossas, sambas and odd-rhythmic baiaos, nestling smartly within classic, subtly shifting songs by the legendary likes of Walter Santos and Teresa Souza (her parents), Jobim and Djavan. Her renditions of these classics feel familiar only with her conversational yet improv-ready tone -- one that makes you nearly forget that you've felt these songs somewhere before.

Fri., Nov. 29, 5:45 p.m., $10 (museum admission), Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 215-763-8100.

—A.D. Amorosi