Batidinha

This short but catchy song, Batidinha, sneaks into the eleven tracks of Wave like a whisper that grows without warning. Recorded in three days with American jazz musicians and a string section that barely makes an appearance, the track moves in 4/4 time but with a detail that makes it special: Jobim's piano plays notes that slip between samba and cool jazz, as if each chord had a soft but insistent echo. It's not a song that grabs your attention at first, but after listening to it twice, it's already spinning in your head.

The album Wave was completed in 1967 in New York, produced by Creed Taylor and with arrangements by Claus Ogerman —a key detail, because his work gave the songs that air of controlled freshness that made them stand out on jazz charts. The recording was handled by Rudy van Gelder, a sound engineer already renowned for capturing the brilliance of instruments without overpowering the volume. On the cover, the photo of a giraffe in Amboseli National Park —taken by Pete Turner in 1964— reflects the contrast between the wild and the polished found in the record: something organic that, in the end, ended up sounding like a studio production.