There's a hint of George Benson in the way Brazilian singer/songwriter Ivan Lins has straddled jazz and pop since 1970. You can hear a palpable joy in his clear-eyed, hopeful compositions, and he gives his fellow musicians a lot of room to breathe—solos are taken, regardless of whether it's a ballad, a samba or a pop song based on the Cuban clave. He's produced an enormous body of work and his songs have been covered by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand and Michael Bublé. Hard to believe we nearly lost this musical treasure to a career in chemical engineering.