A Star of the Southern Sky

Brazilian star Claudya played the lead in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Evita” in Brazil, Argentina’s northeasterly neighbor, just across from what’s left of the rain forest--and she now brings a little touch of the hit musical to La Ve Lee in Studio City in her Los Angeles club debut.

But there is much more to this singer than “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”--in Portuguese, no less.

“I like very much the singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Barbra Streisand,” Claudya (pronounced, roughly, Klow- dja) said in hesitant English, backstage between sets. “I love Barbra Streisand. They influence me, and so does jazz. Miles Davis, I love very much. And I love very much to sing with instrumental orchestra, with the voice like an instrument.”

What she is saying is that she is not limited to exquisite ballad-crooning. The lady is one of her country’s leading exponents of Brazilian jazz singing, a la Ellis Regina or Eliana Estevao, and she is no slouch at scat singing. Her flurries of upper-register squeaks, peeps and percussive, staccato TA-ke-ta-TA-ke-tas in the furiously paced Waldyr Azevedo instrumental classic, “Brasileirinho”--all perfectly synchronized with Antonio Adolfo’s keyboard work--leave little doubt of that.

“I read lots of reviews of her in South America,” said La Ve Lee owner Eddie Arbi, a major booster of Brazilian music who invited Claudya to his supper club (which last year was the site of Estevao’s L. A. club debut). “Vikki Carr came to see her twice and told me when Claudya sings ‘Papa, Can You Hear Me?’ she sounds like Streisand,” he said, referring to the song Streisand sings in her film “Yentl.”

“I played a tape of her for Al Jarreau and he thinks she is fabulous,” Arbi said.

A household word in Brazil, Claudya made her debut as a teen-ager in the mid-’60s and has toured South America, Europe and Japan, where she once spent six months singing with jazz great Sadao Watanabe. She took on “Evita” in the mid-’80s in Rio de Janeiro, her hometown, and Sao Paolo. In 1989, she played dates in New York, including a special Brazilian tribute at Lincoln Center, and starred in Rio in “Golden Brasil,” where she did a now-famous interpretation of Carmen Miranda.

She is appearing at La Ve Lee with a taut, busy backup combo consisting of Brazilian keyboardist-composer Adolfo, bassist Antonio Santana and drummer Ron Wagner.

Although Adolfo and Claudya have been friends for 15 years, this is their first musical pairing.

“We never had the chance to play together in Brazil. This is our first chance. It’s incredible, but it’s really true,” said Adolfo, joining Claudya backstage. “Claudya is a singer with a musician’s feeling. She’s not just a singer, she’s a musician also. Everything we do she understands and she goes with. She’s very easy to work with. Maybe that’s why we put the show together very easily, because she is so musical.

“She sings like a jazz instrument, and it’s very comfortable for us. Because some singers just sing and what we do or play is not so important. But not her.”

Claudya on this night is dazzling in a sparkly black-and-paisley gown, dangling earrings and turquoise eye shadow. Her hair is tied tightly back, except for two wisps curling down her forehead. Relatively untrained, she remembers vividly the day she knew she would spend her life singing.

“One moment very important in my life when I was 7 years old,” she said. “My mother heard me walking around the house, singing, and told me, ‘You have to sing! You will be a great singer!’ And I am like this ,” she said, pointing to her arm, suggesting goose pimples. “This I will never forget.”

Her appearance at La Ve Lee ranks up there somewhere too, she said--despite homesickness for her husband and songwriting partner Chico Medori. The couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Grazielle, sang with Claudya in a song she wrote for her latest album and accompanied her mother to Los Angeles.

How does Claudya like being here?

“It’s a very nice experience because the people like very much Brazilian music,” she said with a smile. “I think that Brazilian music now is, with American music, one of the most important musics in the world. And I like very much La Ve Lee. In English, I don’t know it’s-- intimate . People come to here to listen, not to talk. They respect the artist on the stage.”

With good reason.

Claudya performs at La Ve Lee, 12514 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, at 9 and 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through November. Cover: $5 with two-drink minimum; no cover with dinner. (818) 980-8158.