She recorded/performed with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfa, Ron Carter, Larry Coryell, Sadao Watanabe, Hermeto Pascoal, Joao Donato, John McLaughoun, Jay Berliner, Marcos Valle, Azymuth, Dom Um Romao, Joao Palma and many others.

Most recently, she has toured Europe since 2006 with the Peter Scharli Trio in a fruitful collaboration that led to the recording of the album "Obrigado Dom Um Romao", a tribute to the legendary Brazilian drummer. Released by the TCB label in the USA in August 2008 (distributed by Allegro Music), it's receiving rave reviews all over the world. "Ithamara Koorax has one of the loveliest voices in creation", according to the DownBeat review of that album, printed in the November 2008 issue.

On Brazilian Butterfly, Koorax has set a new bar for jazz vocalists who come after her. As she does, they will need to embody many traditions and musical histories, root them in the tradition, and be able to comfortably combine as well improvise seamlessly with and between them. Thus far, Brazilian Butterfly is the jewel in Koorax's crown and a watermark in the 21st century, not only for Brazilian jazz, but for jazz and world music as a whole." - Thom Jurek, All Music Guide.

Although Rio de Janeiro-based vocalist Ithamara Koorax has long been acclaimed as a superb singer and a highly creative artist in her native Brazil as well as in Japan, it wasn't until the best-selling album "Serenade in Blue" (with combined sales of 250,000 copies all over the world) that American, European and South Korean listeners were introduced to her unique vocal stylings. That release helped her to be acclaimed in the USA as one as one of the world’s Top 4 jazz singers in the 2002 Down Beat Readers Poll --behind only Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, and Dianne Reeves, and ahead of Norah Jones and Jane Monheit.

Back in 2000, Ithamara had been voted for the first time as one of the world's ten best jazz singers by Down Beat, also appearing as # 3 Best Beyond Artist, behind only Sting and Carlos Santana, and ahead of such heavyweights as Tom Waits, Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell. "Serenade In Blue" (featuring Deodato, Jay Berliner, Azymuth, and Dom Um Romao) was voted # 7 Best Beyond Album in that same 2000 Down Beat Readers Poll.

Ithamara's follow-up CD,"Love Dance: The Ballad Album" (featuring John McLaughlin, Marcos Valle, and Mario Castro-Neves) established her artistry in the most convincing possible terms. It was voted # 5 Best Beyond Album in the 2003 DownBeat Readers Poll, behind only discs by Norah Jones, Steely Dan, Radiohead and The Roots. "Love Dance" was also acclaimed as one of the Top 10 Vocal Albums for 2003, by the critics of the prestigious The Independent Weekly (USA). It also got rave reviews on Cadence and Jazz Times magazines.

For this first "Best Of" compilation (EMI), celebrating Ithamara Koorax's 15 years of recording career, compilation producer Andy Kim has assembled an extraordinary selection, picking up her most famous tracks all over the world. All of them produced by Arnaldo DeSouteiro (founder of Jazz Station Records) for such worldwidely acclaimed albums as "Cry Me A River", "Ithamara Koorax Sings The Luiz Bonfá Songbook", "Serenade in Blue", "Someday", and the most recent one, "Autumn in New York", recorded in 2004 with a trio led by German pianist Jurgen Friedrich. Read through the personnel listings for each track and you will find a who’s who of Brazilian giants.

”Moon River” is a stunning stroke of cool genius, beautiful and neo-classic... Koorax’s whispered yet urgent voice in “Un Homme et Une Femme” oozes and dribbles down over the instrumentation like honey down a lover’s soft neck and shoulders and... oh! Nevermind...”, wrote Chris Slawecki, Senior Editor of All About Jazz.

Michel Bedin, in Jazz Hot, added: "Ithamara Koorax c'est avant tout une voix aux capaciités extraordinaires...sensuelle, féminine, romantique, délicieuse."

Ithamara Koorax is a native of Rio de Janeiro, and started her professional career as a singer in 1990. Koorax's reputation as a creative and expressive vocalist, gifted with a four-octave range, spread quickly and her voice became a very hot commodity in studios all over Rio. Ithamara soon began performing with the likes of Hermeto Pascoal, Edu Lobo, Azymuth, Marcos Valle, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá, Martinho da Vila, and João Donato.

Then her fame spread halfway around the world. Her debut solo album, "Luiza" (Live in Rio), won the Brazilian version of the Grammy: the 1994 Sharp Award for Best New Artist. The CDs she eventually released in Japan, "Rio Vermelho" (1995, which included Antonio Carlos Jobim's last recorded performance), "Almost in Love/Ithamara Koorax Sings the Luiz Bonfá Songbook" (1996, featuring Bonfá, Ron Carter, Larry Coryell, Sadao Watanabe, and Eumir Deodato), and "Wave 2001" (1997) have all been acclaimed by Japan’s jazz bible, Swing Journal magazine, appearing on its best-selling charts. Then, in March 1998, in an able display of her versatility and pioneering, she recorded the first Brazilian album in the drum 'n' bass genre, "Bossa Nova Meets Drum 'n' Bass".

That same year, Ithamara began a fruitful collaboration with another Brazilian music luminary, the late Dom Um Romão (formerly with Sergio Mendes, Frank Sinatra, and Weather Report, among others), being prominently featured on Romão's much-acclaimed albums "Rhythm Traveller" (1998), "Lake of Perseverance" (2000) and "Nu Jazz Meets Brasil" (2002), as well as on the "Brazil All-Stars/Rio Strut" project for JSR/Milestone. They've performed together in sold-out concerts in London's "Jazz Cafe", the acid-jazz mecca, as well as all over Brazil. 

In testimony to Ithamara's talent, composer and guitar legend Luiz Bonfa once remarked, "It's an honor and a privilege to work with such a great artist as Ithamara, one of the best singers in the world." Jobim himself referred to her as "simply one of the best singers on the scene."

"I quickly became a Koorax Konvert", wrote Ira Gitler, regarded as the most important jazz historian alive. "Koorax is her own woman. She is multi-faceted and multi-lingual, comfortable in all situations and expressive in a variety of languages. Her range and technique are remarkable but you don’t necessarily take time out to marvel at her technique until later on because you are too absorbed in her musical message. Her powerful singing speaks for itself with celestial eloquence."

Right now, "Brazilian Butterfly" continues to receive rave reviews all over the world. And once again Ithamara Koorax was voted one of the Top 10 jazz singers by Down Beat, this time placing # 5 in the 2007 Down Beat Readers Poll (December 2007 issue). "Brazilian Butterfly" appeared as one of the best albums of the year according to the DownBeat Editorial Staff, in the January 2008 issue.

"Dear Ithamara, Congratulations on your new CD and the good ratings in the DownBeat Reader's Poll. Going up each year! Thank you for including "Unisphere" on your new album. Your package arrived on my birthday, and no birthday surprise could have been nicer. Sincerely, Dave Brubeck".

This article appeared in print on November 15, 2009 in the New York Times

Sounds From Around the World, Some Dark, Others Delicate By BEN RATLIFF

Ithamara Koorax & Juarez Moreira

For all his importance as an originator of bossa nova, João Gilberto hasn’t written a lot of music. But all the adepts know which songs in his slim discography are his own: the bewitchingly repetitive ones with minimal lyrics, like “Bim Bom” (rumored to mimic the pendulum-swing of washerwomen’s hips); “Valsa,” with its short, Möbius-strip melody; and “Undiú,” a drone meditation played over the Afro-Brazilian baião rhythm. In a new record, “Bim Bom:

The Complete João Gilberto Songbook” (Motema), the jazz singer Ithamara Koorax and the guitarist Juarez Moreira, both from Brazil, line up all the existing Gilberto songs — his alone and the few he wrote with others — and play them with a sense of outgoing enthusiasm. These are mostly voice-and-guitar recordings, and Ms. Koorax’s singing is bright and forthright, unlike Mr. Gilberto’s whisper. But it’s fresh-water beautiful.

Website :- www.ithamarakoorax.blogspot.com