Nanny Assis was born August 25, 1969, in Salvador, Bahia, in northeastern Brazil. He was actually born with the given name of Rovanio. "I didn't like the sound of that name when I was young," he explains. "I thought 'Rovanio' would be difficult for people to pronounce or to remember. I've had this nickname since I was a kid, Nanny. Not a lot of people have known my real name, until now." When he was 7, his musical gifts began manifesting themselves before an audience--or rather, before a congregation. "My father was a pastor, so I grew up playing sacred music. My first instrument was drums, played in the church, and I sang in the youth choir." He learned guitar by osmosis, simply because the instrument was ubiquitous in Brazilian culture. With those skills in hand, and much to his parents' (initial) displeasure, Assis began making money playing secular music with his friends. He did rock in clubs, samba at carnaval, and even delved into jazz after discovering American players at a record store in Salvador. Though he studied linguistics and Portuguese literature at Catholic University of Salvador and worked for a while afterward as a writer, Assis had always intended to be a professional musician. He harbored ambitions to move to the United States even as he married and started a family of his own in Salvador. "I was really attracted to American music, and many of the albums I loved were live albums," he says. "We didn't get a lot of live American music in Bahia. Those albums made me feel like I needed to go to that place and connect directly to this music." The opportunity came in 1993, when the Austin, Texas-based band Rolling Thunder held auditions for samba percussionists. Assis passed the audition and came with them to Texas as a member of the band, touring the U.S. and Europe with them. This was the proverbial foot in the door; he kept seeking out opportunities to work in the States, finally moving to New York in 1999 and quickly becoming a noted player of samba and Brazilian jazz, both as a leader and a sideman. While Assis considers himself a samba musician, not a jazz musician, it's the jazz players who are most curious about Brazil's traditions and are thus his most frequent collaborators. His 2006 debut album, Double Rainbow, included contributions from John Patitucci, Eumir Deodato, Michael Leonhardt, and Erik Friedlander, among others. His subsequent projects partnered him with Arthur Lipner (2010's Brazilian Vibes) and Janis Siegel and John di Martino (on 2014's Requinte Trio). He's also produced several recordings across multiple genres. By 2020, Nanny Assis had 40 years as a performing musician under his belt. His esteem as a bossa/jazz vocalist, percussionist, and guitarist was well established, but for the Bahia native (now based in New York and South Florida) that was only part of the story. "Coming from Brazil, I have so many different styles and roots for my music," he says. "It's very rich--I wanted to present an album that would show the real me." To drive the point home, for the first time in his professional career, he signed his real first name to the album. Rovanio is indeed a remarkable kaleidoscope of styles, textures, ideas, and even languages, yet it never strays from the distinctive Brazilian elements that form the foundation of Assis's music. It doesn't have to: that kaleidoscope itself is part of what makes the country's music special. "Brazil was a Portuguese colony, of course," Assis points out. "Portuguese is my first language. But it also has the second largest concentration of Japanese people in the word. And then in Bahia, the place I come from, 75 percent of the population is of African descent. There is a Japanese community, an Arab community. There's so much information in one place, and it's really strong in the Afro-Brazilian culture, the dance, and the music. And I figure I'm the glue for all that." The glue, perhaps--but Assis is holding together multiple parts. No less than 20 artists appear across Rovanio's ten tracks (even more, if each member of the St. Petersburg Studio Orchestra--which plays on three pieces--is counted separately). He also co-wrote all but one of the songs. Those many contributors enhance, rather than detract from, his mission of self-revelation. Part of "the real me" Assis wants to portray is that he is a natural and enthusiastic collaborator. Which makes participants like bassist Ron Carter; guitarist Chico Pinheiro; trumpeter Randy Brecker; pianist Fred Hersch; saxophonists John Ellis, Igor Butman, and Lakecia Benjamin; and vocalists Janis Siegel, Vinicius Cantu?ria, Emanuel Yerday, and Laura and Dani Assis p