Mendes returning to Brazil stage for New Year's

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Dec 28 (Reuters) After a 28-year absence from the Brazilian stage, bossa nova legend Sergio Mendes will play on Rio de Janeiro's famed Ipanema beach on New Year's Eve with hip-hop band Black Eyed Peas.

Rio prides itself for hosting what it calls the world's two biggest parties -- its dazzling Carnival jamboree and the New Year's Eve bash.

More than two million revelers cram the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and the adjacent Atlantica avenue to celebrate the turn of the year and watch a fireworks show.

The free concert by Mendes, Black Eyed Peas and US singer John Legend, with the participation of the drum corps of a Carnival samba school, will be one of the main attractions of the night.

''It's an incredible emotion to play at Ipanema's New Year's Eve ... It's a pleasure to be able to show my music to a new generation,'' Mendes said on his Web site www.sergiomendesmusic.com.

Mendes, who started out as a jazz pianist, became one of the best-selling Brazilian musicians in the 1960s as part of his ''Brasil '66'' band that fused bossa nova and Western pop styles.

Mendes' version of Jorge Ben Jor's ''Mas Que Nada'' was the first Portuguese-language hit in the United States.

Mendes's 2006 album ''Timeless'', produced by and featuring Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am (William James Adams Jr.) last month won the Latin Grammy Award for the best Brazilian pop album.

In Timeless, which also features guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Q-Tip and Justin Timberlake, Mendes mixes Brazilian rhythms like samba and bossa nova with US-bred urban music styles such as hip hop and rap.

Reuters BDP 0918