The bossa nova? For Boston girl, blame it on love

Born in Boston to an Argentine-Italian father and an Anglo mother, she is making a name for herself through the Brazilian music bossa nova, which, in Portuguese, means "new trend."

Mari Rosa, multiethnic? You might say that.

"I feel like a New England gal who fell in love with a Brazilian man, except the man is not a man, it's really music," Rosa says of the genre, which is credited to Brazilian artists João Gilberto and others in the mid-20th century.

Now the 20-something Rosa (she declines to give her age) is catching the attention of bossa nova and Latin jazz aficionados, who praise her voice as well as her multilingual song-writing skills.

In April, the Boston Latin School graduate and former West Roxbury resident released her debut CD, "Honeyspot," a collection of bossa nova, Spanish boleros (dance music known for dramatic pauses, twists, and turns) and traditional American jazz tunes. The Miami New Times has called the CD a "make-out" album that is a cross between Martin Denny's "Afro-Desia" and Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz's "Getz Au Go-Go." An online jazz critic called Rosa "an enchanting young performer with a pitch-perfect voice" who has "a talent for writing songs that are eccentric and irresistible."

Heady stuff for a little girl who grew up battling the snows of New England but is making a name for herself singing about the sands of Rio de Janeiro, a place she's never visited -- yet.

"Heritage was a very present thing in my life," says Rosa, noting that food and music always played a central role in her multilingual, multiethnic household.

"The sounds of the languages really tuned me into being a very aural person. . . . I think that's why I'm drawn to Portuguese."

But it started with music of her own native country. Charlie Sorrento -- a well-known performer and vocal coach who has taught at the Berklee College of Music -- recalls that when Rosa first came to him out of high school, she wanted to become a folk singer.

As they progressed in her training, "that went bye-bye," Sorrento says, and Rosa turned her attention to songwriting and Latin music.

While Rosa studied with Sorrento on her own, she enrolled as a college student at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. It was there that she delved into jazz, locking herself in her room and listening to jazz nonstop until, she says, she heard Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" -- one of the best-known bebop songs of the 1940s -- in her dreams.

Then came bossa nova.

Rosa doesn't remember exactly when or how or where she was when she fell for the complex harmonies and improvised jazz-like patterns of the style, but when she did, she felt her life change. Some faculty members resisted her desire to tackle bossa nova, she says. They wanted her to concentrate on such American jazz greats as Ella Fitzgerald .

Still, Rosa wanted to pursue her new love.

At first, the unlikely focus on bossa nova also drew her parents' concern, because not only was Rosa focused on bossa nova, she wanted to make a career out of it. They had hoped she would pursue a career in a more established field, such as law. After all, Rosa had received a public-service fellowship and a post at the Massachusetts attorney general's office after high school.

"I think we all knew she liked singing when she was little. Children love singing," says Ruth Guarino, her mother. "But for a career?"

After going on the road and listening to her sing, though, Rosa's family has been won over. Now her mother can be found at Rosa's concerts whenever she gets the chance. During a recent Rosa performance at Ryles in Cambridge, Guarino was working the crowd -- she not only took names for Rosa's mailing list but also recorded the show with a camcorder. "I'm happy because she's happy," Guarino says.

Now living in New York, Rosa says that in Boston, where the area has a large Portuguese and Brazilian population, she has found audiences to be "extremely welcoming" and complimentary. Some Brazilians have even told her they thought she had studied in Brazil.

Non-Brazilian New Englanders are sometimes a different story. "I've yet to figure that out," says Rosa. "When they find out I'm from New England, I get kind of this -- pause."

They seem not to know quite how to label her, what category to put her artistry in.

These days, in addition to singing the bossa nova, Rosa is going after the traditional romantic Spanish bolero.

This broadening of her expression is a sign of her further growth as a singer, Sorrento says of his former student.

"The minute I heard 'Besame Mucho,' I was sold," the vocal coach says of Rosa's rendition of the famous Spanish bolero slow song.

"I say, 'OK. She knows what's she's supposed to do now," Sorrento says.

"Bye-bye. Fly."

Russell Contreras can be reached at rcontreras@globe.com.