Her full name is Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças, but she goes by the simpler moniker CéU (pronounced “cell with a light L”). It's a name that can be translated into English in a couple of subtly but significantly different ways. CéU means either "sky" or "heaven," depending on context, and either translation applies quite nicely in this case: think of her as "Sky" when you hear the soft blue clarity of her voice, or "Heaven" when one of her sweetly bubbling melodic hooks takes you by surprise.

CéU's global bonafides are already established. Her accolades include a Latin Grammy nomination for “best new artist” of 2006 and she was recognized by France’s Les Inrockuptibles as one of the top 5 musical revelations of 2005. In addition, she was the first international artist featured in the Starbucks Hear Music™ Debut series. However, if you have here-to-fore been unaware of CéU's quiet assault on the international music scene than please allow us to make an introduction.

There are good reasons for the depth and complexity of CéU's songs. She was born into a musical family in the artistically diverse city of São Paulo; her father, a locally renowned composer, arranger and musicologist, taught her at a young age to appreciate the music of Brazil's great classical composers, including Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ernesto Nazaré and Orlando Silva. By age 15 she had decided to become a singer, and pursued music studies in lieu of a college education; trained on the violão (a nylon-stringed Brazilian guitar) and in music theory, she was performing onstage with major artists and exploring the repertoire of the marchinhas (turn-of-the-century carnival music) by her late teens. Soon after that she relocated temporarily to New York City, where she had a chance meeting with fellow Brazilian musician Antonio Pinto, who became her flat mate. She later learned that he was actually a distant cousin, and their relationship was renewed when he teamed up with lead producer Beto Villares to help her record her album. Pinto, who produced CéU’s song “Ave Cruz”, is the composer of the musical score for two Oscar Nominated films, Central Station (1999) and City of God (2003).

Following her stint in New York where she was influenced by the sound of Hip-Hop, jazz singers Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald, Lauren Hill and Erykah Badu, she returned home to São Paulo, thus bringing her sound and focus full circle. Her worldly travels freed her from convention and let her choose her colors from a larger palette. That freedom has resulted in music that is surprisingly mature and fully realized for such a young musician. On every track you find yourself being pleasantly surprised by her delicate and elegant balance of inventive experimentation and reverence for tradition, in particular for samba. And then there are her celebrations of the cuica, a Brazilian percussion instrument that looks like a drum and sounds like an agitated monkey or tropical bird. Although CéU carefully avoids the drum'n'bossa sound that is so much the rage in her native country these days, there are definite hints of junglism in both the drum sound and in the manipulated cuica samples that are layered throughout her recent efforts; messy guitar parts lurk in the background, hinting at an impending chaos that never quite takes over. Samba, reggae, dub, electronica, love, heartbreak, chaos and sweet, sweet tunefulness – sounds like the perfect recipe for a special new talent. And so it is.