Associated acts: Brasil 65 and Brasil 66. Sérgio Santos Mendes (born February 11, 1941 in Niterói) He has released over thirty-five albums, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. The child of a physician in Niterói, Brazil, Mendes attended the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late-1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was taking off. Mendes played with Antonio Carlos Jobim (regarded as a mentor) and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil.