\n<\/p>\n
Carlos Lyra, a Brazilian composer, singer and guitarist whose cool, meticulous melodies helped give structure and power to bossa nova, the samba-inflected jazz style that became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 1960s, died on Dec. 16 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 90.<\/p>\n
His daughter, the singer Kay Lyra, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was sepsis.<\/p>\n
Alongside Ant\u00f4nio Carlos Jobim<\/a>, Mr. Lyra was widely considered among the greatest composers of bossa nova. Mr. Jobim once called him \u201ca great melodist, harmonist, king of rhythm, of syncopation, of swing\u201d and \u201csingular, without equal.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Lyra was part of a loose circle of musicians who in the 1950s began looking for ways to blend the traditional samba sounds of Brazil with American jazz and European classical influences. They often gathered at the Plaza Hotel in Rio, not far from the Copacabana beach, to discuss music and hash out ideas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One of those musicians, the singer and guitarist Jo\u00e3o Gilberto<\/a>, included three of Mr. Lyra\u2019s compositions \u2014 \u201cMaria Ningu\u00e9m\u201d (\u201cMaria Nobody\u201d), \u201cLobo Bobo\u201d (\u201cFoolish Wolf\u201d) and \u201cSaudade F\u00eaz um Samba\u201d (\u201cSaudade Made a Samba\u201d) \u2014 on his \u201cChega de Saudade\u201d (1959), which has often been called the first bossa nova album. Mr. Lyra released his own first album a year later, titled simply \u201cCarlos Lyra: Bossa Nova.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Inspired by the West Coast jazz of Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and others, Mr. Lyra brought a relaxed sophistication to his work, as well as an exacting standard for musical precision.<\/p>\n \u201cHe threw a lot of songs away,\u201d his daughter said. \u201cHe only kept the good ones, he told me.\u201d<\/p>\n He frequently wrote with a lyricist \u2014 originally Ronaldo B\u00f4scoli and then, beginning in the early 1960s, Vin\u00edcius de Moraes<\/a>, who wrote the original Portuguese lyrics to \u201cThe Girl From Ipanema,\u201d perhaps the most famous bossa nova song.<\/p>\n Mr. Lyra joined Mr. Gilberto, Mr. Jobim, S\u00e9rgio Mendes and other Brazilian artists in the famed 1962 performance at Carnegie Hall<\/a> in New York that helped introduce bossa nova to American audiences. Jazz artists like Miles Davis<\/a> and Erroll Garner<\/a> sat in the audience, as did record executives, and several of the performers (though not Mr. Lyra) later signed contracts with U.S. labels.<\/p>\n Many of bossa nova\u2019s leading lights were either just writers or just performers; Mr. Lyra was among the few who were both. Glowingly charismatic onstage, with a rich baritone voice, he captured audiences around Brazil and, in the mid-1960s, the United States, when he spent two years touring with the saxophonist Stan Getz<\/a>, the leading American exponent of bossa nova.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Lyra also differed from his fellow bossa nova musicians in his politics. Most were apolitical or leaned to the right; Mr. Lyra was an outspoken leftist who joined the Communist Party and helped found the People\u2019s Center for Culture, a gathering place in Rio de Janeiro for progressive students and artists.<\/p>\n He wrote songs (sometimes with his own lyrics, sometimes in collaboration with Mr. de Moraes) that had a social and political inflection, although his messages were increasingly coded after Brazil\u2019s government was overthrown in 1964 during a military coup. His politics nevertheless drove him to choose exile, twice.<\/p>\n \u201cI consider myself politically proletariat,\u201d he told<\/a> The New York Times in 2015. \u201cI consider myself economically bourgeois. And artistically I consider myself an aristocrat.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlos Eduardo Lyra Barbosa was born on May 11, 1933, in Rio de Janeiro. His father, Jos\u00e9 Domingos Barbosa, was an officer in the Brazilian Navy. His mother, Helena (Lyra) Barbosa, was a homemaker.<\/p>\n Carlinhos (people called him by that name, the diminutive form of Carlos, throughout his life) was a musically precocious child. His family was replete with amateur artists and musicians, including his mother, who played the music of Debussy and other impressionist composers on the piano.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He studied classical guitar with Moacir Santos<\/a>, an influential composer and music teacher, and began writing songs in his teens. In 1955, the singer Sylvia Telles recorded his \u201cMenina.\u201d<\/p>\n That early success brought him into contact with other young artists, like Mr. Gilberto, Mr. Jobim, the singer Nara Le\u00e3o and the composer Roberto Menescal, all of whom played a central role in the formation of bossa nova.<\/p>\n Mr. Lyra left Brazil after the coup in 1964. When he came off the road after his long tour with Mr. Getz, he settled in Mexico City, where he joined many other self-exiled Brazilian artists.<\/p>\n There he met and married Katherine Riddell, an actress known in Brazil under the stage name Kate Lyra. They later divorced.<\/p>\n Along with his daughter, Mr. Lyra is survived by his second wife, Magda Pereira Botafogo; his sister, Maria Helena Lyra Fialho; and his brother, S\u00e9rgio.<\/p>\n Mr. Lyra returned to Brazil in the early 1970s. But, finding the right-wing dictatorship still unpalatable, he went into exile again in 1974, this time to Los Angeles. There he underwent primal-scream therapy under Arthur Janov<\/a>, befriending another famous participant, John Lennon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Two years later he came back to Brazil for good, settling in Rio de Janeiro. By then the world had moved on, and many of the bossa nova musicians who remained in the country had reached an accommodation with the military government, which in turn promoted their careers \u2014 a game that Mr. Lyra declined to play.<\/p>\n But eventually he, too, won acclaim as a national treasure. Among the many celebrations around his 90th birthday was the release of the album \u201cAfeto: Homenagem Carlos Lyra (90 Anos),\u201d or \u201cAffection: Homage to Carlos Lyra (90 Years),\u201d featuring his songs performed by some of Brazil\u2019s leading musicians, including Gilberto Gil, Joyce Moreno and M\u00f4nica Salmaso.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n