A trio backs
Sete on this fine late-1962 session, including Ben Tucker on bass, Dave Bailey on drums, and either J.D. Paula and Carmen Costa on percussion.
Sete wrote or co-wrote most of the dozen tunes, making room for a couple of Antonio Carlos Jobim co-writes. It's a good showcase for
Sete's jazz bossa nova playing at its best: masterfully virtuosic, yet at the same time imbued with passion and taste. Although this is a mixture of bossa nova and American mainstream jazz in arrangement, the jazz elements are appropriately muted, adding rhythm and punch without getting in the way of
Sete's soloing being the main dish. Shy but endearing vocals grace a couple of the cuts, and the tone is nicely varied, sometimes approaching a fast shuffle ("Sweet Thing"), sometimes getting into moodier colors ("My Different World") that keep the set from being too unceasingly upbeat. There's also a version of the well-loved Brazilian standard "Manha de Carnaval." The whole album was included on the 2001 Fantasy CD reissue
Tour De Force, which also has the entirety of
Sete's mid-1963 session that originally came out on an LP also titled Tour de Force.