Robin Blakeman calls Antonio Carlos Jobim’s music a paradox.

“It is simple and sophisticated; it’s sad but it is happy; it’s like a cool breeze on a warm day or a warm breeze on a cool day.”

Jobim is the man who penned The Girl From Ipanema. He introduced bossa nova to North American and European audiences.

Fifty years since his debut record (The Composer Of Desafinado, Plays) Blakeman wants to remind music fans how important Jobim’s output remains.

“It seems to possess a timeless, tireless elegance,” he says.

“That album is so poetic and understated and beautiful. It is all instrumental but it is a classic, and almost classical.”

Blakeman has been playing jazz since he was 16. “One puff can be very addictive,” he jokes.

That was in the early 1960s, when Jobim’s The Girl From Ipanema had just arrived.

“It was a landmark, a turning point. It was the song that started it all, with Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto, and Jobim himself on piano. That is a classic album. It was the start of a whole new movement.”

Blakeman is a multi-instrumentalist who studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, US, in 1974. He has devoted his life to jazz, living in America and Latin America, in between returning to his home-town of Brighton.

“I’ve stuck with it, through thick and thin. It is not an easy life, but I’m fortunate.”

He has spent the past year writing new arrangements of Jobim’s music, working from scores by legendary jazzman Claus Ogerman for a celebratory concert at Brighton’s St Bartholomew’s Church.

The lifelong Jobim fan also used the Cancioneiro Jobim books of scores produced by the singer’s son, Paulo, for the arrangements.

This is not the first time he has worked on Jobim’s music.

“My first Jobim tribute project was in 2004 to mark the tenth anniversary of his passing.

“It was very well-received but this one will be better – not least because of the lovely voice and vocal expertise of Tina May.”

May is an English jazz singer who Blakeman met through a mutual friend, Brightonian Eddie Shirkie, who died last year.

“I saw Tina at All Saints Church in Hove last year. Towards the end of September, after I got back from Panama, I said, ‘Tina, are we actually ever going to do this?’ She was umming and ahhing but once she heard the arrangements she said absolutely.”

The 24 songs they have picked include instrumentals and Blakeman’s favourites, Look To The Sky and This Happy Madness, as well as two classics: Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars and Wave.

An eight-piece band, the Luiz Bonfá Society, will back Tina May.

Bonfá was another Brazilian composer and guitarist who was a contemporary of Jobim, and worked with him on the score for the charming film Orfeo Negro (Black Orpheus), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959.

“Any similarity with the name Lewes Bonfire Society is not by accident,” laughs Blakeman.

Blakeman will be playing two rare flutes, the bass flute and the B-flat flûte d’amour, along with the alto flute.

He says, “The alto and bass flutes were invented for Jobim’s music – or the other way around.”

The most important instrument for Jobim is guitar: “Without guitar it ain’t bossa nova. I love that style of guitar, especially that finger style because it is so sophisticated, sexy, warm, romantic, and that is a large part of what people love about Jobim: his music is romantic and sad, of course, because romance generally leads to sadness.”

This Brighton show might not be the end of the road – Blakeman and May are hoping to take the project to Brazil and Panama to perform with local musicians there.

“I feel strongly there is a new generation this music should appeal to. It is not garbage like reggaeton or rap – Jobim was a great songwriter in the same league as Cole Porter and George Gershwin. In fact he was probably better because he was more prolific. He wrote so many beautiful songs and many rare gems which a lot of people haven’t heard.”