He studied a lot Chopin, Debussy, Brahms also. He liked to wake up very early. And he’s in this house, the piano was in the back room there and always in the morning I would listen to him playing Brahms, or Chopin or Debussy, always studying early. And then he would write his songs later.

 

  He used to listen a lot to Sinatra and he used to sing in my mother's ear, and all this stuff.

 

  Whenever I was with Tom Jobim, he was always mentioning classical composers, even when we were playing some bossa nova songs, some songs of his. And then he stopped suddenly in one special chord and he would say, Here come the Russians. And then he would mention Ranchmaninoff and Stravinsky.

 

  There was a third member of the team that dominated bossa nova, the poet Vinicius de Moraes who wrote lyrics for the melodies by Tom Jobim and other composers.

 

  He too was a singer and worked among others, with the guitarist, Baden Powell.