You're sitting in your happy chair at home, just mooching a magazine, when the phone rings. It's a good friend you haven't seen in a long time, and she would like to see you for old time's sake. She turns up and it's like the last few years never existed—you talk heart to heart about old times and things that matter, no idle chit-chat. Fact or fantasy?

Yana Purim is that old friend even though I've never met her. Her music, which I shall call "intimate jazz," communicates deep feelings based on raw emotion. As soon as the needle touches the groove or the laser scans the first pit, it's immediately apparent that she has something interesting to tell and has a way of making you want to sit back, listen, take it all in, and then smile. It is very "person-to-person contact" and in the context of much of the music produced today very different.

Of course this tells you nothing about who Yana is, her background, her influences, the musicians she has played with or even the style of her music. Born in Rio de Janeiro to a Brazilian mother and Romanian father, both Jewish, her house was never lacking sound or music! Brazilian musicians such as the late