Lisa Ono is known as the "Queen of bossa nova" in China and her adoring public will no doubt be clamoring for tickets when she performs her first concert in the capital city this weekend.

The Japanese songbird is celebrating the 20th anniversary of her musical career and will take the stage at Beijing's Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium tomorrow, as part of her 2009 World Tour Live.

She will then fly south to play the Shanghai International Jazz Festival, appearing at the 8,000-seat Shanghai Grand Stage on Jan 16.

Ono is back by public demand. At her two concerts in Shanghai's Fuxing Park last year, the 1,900 venue was sold out, hence the larger space this time around.

How the 46-year-old singer became the "Queen of bossa nova" is a curious story.

Born in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Ono moved to Tokyo, aged 10, where her father opened a club and she started singing and playing acoustic guitar.

She later became a songwriter and "popular music ambassador" for Brazil, specializing in bossa nova, a musical style that evolved in the late 1950s and has become part of the standard jazz repertoire.

"When I first heard bossa nova I was very young and fell in love with it. For me, it is the air that I breathe," Ono says.

She became a well-known figure in Japan because of her music, initially, then starred in a number of commercials that raised her profile further.

She released her debut album, Catupiry, in 1989 and since then has released about one album a year for the past two decades.

She has won various jazz awards in Japan and Brazil and extended her fan base in Europe with a France-inspired disc In My Island.

Last year, Jamabalaya - Bossa Americana went platinum in Taiwan, consolidating her status as Asia's prime exponent of bossa nova, on account of her crystal clear vocals and upbeat easy listening arrangements.

Ono sings primarily in Portuguese but impressed her Shanghai audiences last year with a version of the Chinese classic Ye Lai Xiang. She is expected to cover the song again in Beijing.

"It was the first time I had sung bossa nova in Chinese. It seems the audiences loved the rearrangement," Ono says. "The Ye Lai Xiang melody is sweet, soft and fits bossa nova, which is free and relaxed."

(China Daily January 9, 2009)