Faculty

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Luciana Souza was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1966. Souza grew up in a family of Bossa Nova innovators—her father, a singer and songwriter, her mother, a poet and lyricist. Her work as a performer transcends traditional boundaries around musical styles, offering solid roots in jazz, sophisticated lineage in world music and an enlightened approach to new music. 

As a leader, Luciana Souza has released acclaimed recordings since 2002, including her six Grammy-nominated records Brazilian Duos, North and South, Duos II, Tide, Duos III and The Book of Chet. Her debut recording for Universal, The New Bossa Nova, was produced by her husband, Larry Klein, and was met with widespread critical acclaim. Her recordings also include two works based on poetry: The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop and Other Songsand Neruda. Of her 2015 release, Speaking in Tongues, The New York Times said: “Luciana Souza has used her voice as an instrument of empathy and intimacy, cultural linkage and poetic disquisition…singing wordlessly but with full expressive intent.” Her critically acclaimed recording, The Book of Longing, saw Souza immersed in the world of poetry again. She set poems by Leonard Cohen, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Christina Rossetti to music. Her 2020 recording, Storytellers, had her collaborating with Grammy Award-winning composer and arranger Vince Mendoza, and the Cologne-based WDR Big Band, on a tribute to the great songwriters of Brazil, including Jobim, Gilberto Gil, Chico Pinheiro, Djavan, Guinga and many others. 

Luciana Souza’s 2023 recording, Cometa, was her first recording with a piano trio—the Brazilian ensemble Trio Corrente. Together for 20 years, Trio Corrente is unparalleled in their ability to translate the traditional jazz trio language into the Brazilian lexicon. With Souza, they created a rich journey into old Sambas and original music composed by each member of the ensemble. Cometa is a celebration of the Brazilian resilience; after four years of an inhumane and tyrannic presidency, the country returns to a place of hope and joy. The recording earned Souza the November 2023 cover of DownBeat magazine, a 2024 Grammy nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album and a spot on NPR’s coveted “Tiny Desk Concert” in April.  

Souza’s latest recording for Sunnyside Records is “Twenty-Four Short Musical Episodes,”hercomposition featuring Chico Pinheiro on guitar and Scott Colley on bass.  In 2022, Souza was awarded a New Jazz Works Grant by Chamber Music America, with funding through the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The piece loosely tracks a day in someone’s life. Souza composed, sang and played percussion on this live recording.  It is slated for release on August 30, 2024. 

From 2020 to 2023, Souza was a fellow with the Massachussets Institute of Technology, helping curate Hearing Amazonia, a major music, culture, science and sustainability project led by Fred Harris, which culminated with a trip to the Amazon in March 2023 and a concert at the famed Teatro Amazonas with Anat Cohen, Evan Ziporyn, the indigenous artist Djuena Tikuna, and the M.I.T. Wind Ensemble. 

Souza has performed and recorded with musical luminaries including Herbie Hancock (on his Grammy-winning record, River: The Joni Letters), Paul Simon, James Taylor, Bobby McFerrin, Maria Schneider and Danilo Perez, among others. Her longstanding duo work with Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo has received accolades across the globe, and her complete discography contains more than 60 records as a side singer. Her singing has been called “transcendental, “perfect” and of “unparalleled beauty.” Entertainment Weekly writes, “Her voice traces a landscape of emotion that knows no boundaries.” Of her work with the chamber music ensemble A Far Cry, the Boston Globe said: “Her performance was more than beautiful. It was consolatory, and true to the work’s air of ultimate things.”

Souza has been a prominent soloist in two important works by composer Osvaldo Golijov: La Pasion According to St. Mark and Oceana. She has performed with the Bach Akademie Stuttgart, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Other orchestral appearances include performances with the New York Philharmonic, the Atlanta Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. She has performed under the expert and inspired baton of conducting greats Robert Spano, Roberto Minczuk and Jeffrey Kahane. Her work in chamber music includes a fruitful collaboration with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet—composers Derek Bermel, Patrick Zimmerli and the composers of The Blue Hour, Rachel Grimes, Angelica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snyder—a setting of a poem by Carolyn Forché. 

Souza began her recording career at age three with a radio commercial, recording more than 200 jingles and soundtracks and becoming a first-call studio veteran at age 16. She spent four years on the faculty at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she received a bachelor’s degree in Jazz Composition. She earned a master’s degree in Jazz Studies from New England Conservatory of Music and taught for four years at Manhattan School of Music in New York City.

She continues to teach masterclasses around the world. In recent years, she has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Berklee College of Music, the Frost School of Music at Miami University, York University in Canada and The Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland.  Souza is on the Board of Trustees of the BMI Foundation and is a member of NARAS.  She taught for two years at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, and for four years at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music in Los Angeles. As of the fall of 2024, Souza is a full-time associate professor at the USC Thornton School of Music. 

From 2005 to 2010, Souza was the Jazz Artist-in-Residence with the prestigious San Francisco Performances. In 2005 and 2013, she was awarded Best Female Jazz Singer by the Jazz Journalists Association. Billboard magazine has said of Luciana Souza, “She continues her captivating journey as a uniquely talented vocalist who organically crosses genre borders. Her music soulfully reflects, wistfully regrets, romantically woos, joyfully celebrates…”