Badi Assad

Brazilian-based singer-guitarist Badi Assad lived in Sarasota for a while in the Nineties, but this concert marks her first official one in Florida since she decided to radically change her musical style, switching from a classical/experimental format to a more jazz-inflected pop style. "I started out playing chorinho and then began my studies playing classical music," she says. "Somewhere down the road, I realized that I was just following in my brothers' footsteps, and that I had to find my own voice as a singer as well."

Her seventh album, Wonderland, is only her second to be recorded in Brazil, to where she returned after a long period in the U.S. "It is a completely different experience to record in your own country, with Brazilian musicians and the Portuguese language all around you," Assad explains. — Ernest Barteldes