Once upon a time, the Brazilian jazz drummer and percussionist Airto Guimorvan Moreira and his wife, iconic singer Flora Purim, were members of Quartetto Nova, which included dextrous multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal and was regularly featured on Brazilian TV. None of which was enough for the couple, who upped and left their country and its dictatorship for the bright jazz lights of NYC, where they played with the respected likes of Stan Getz, Cannnonball Adderly and Joe Zawinul – who recommended Moreira to Miles Davis for the seminal 1969 Bitches Brew recording session; Moreira joined Davis's band then jumped ship to Weather Report and Chick Corea's Return to Forever a year later.

Purim's pure, malleable, often improvised vocals took Corea's band to another level. But there was something golden about the couple's very own double act. At Jazzfest in Bremen, Germany in 1988, backed by a band on bass, tenor saxophone and keyboards (played by Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Marcos Silva), before a crowd enamoured of their talent and connections, the first couple of Brazilian jazz wowed with a set of 10 tunes – including vibing opener ‘Struck by Lightning’ and the bold, raw, seat-of-pants Afro-Brazilian drumfest that is ‘Improvisation No.1 & No.2’ – through which Latin, jazz, funk and fusion ebb, flow and fly free.