To mark the occasion, Brazilian industrial conglomerate Odebrecht commissioned Tom to record a limited edition album, allowing him financial and artistic control.

A year after Jobim's death, his family reached an agreement with Odebrecht to release the album to the general public through BMG Brazil.

[3] As part of the agreement to do the album, Jobim stipulated that recording be done at his house in the Jardim Botânico district, Rio de Janeiro.

Hudson lauded Inéidto's "fabulous sweep" showing the range of musical genres and artists that influenced Jobim's work, such as West Coast jazz, European modernism, Debussy, and Brazilian composer Pixinguinha.

The siren sweep of the female voices brings a sense of exaltation with echoes of African religious chants, the Catholic liturgy and the fugitive textures that have all fed into Brazilian music.

Like his contemporary Burt Bacharach, he does extraordinary things with melody, while making sure to give the man in the street an easily digested emotional pay-off.

It is this complex mingling of the high and the low, of the refined and the faintly naff, that makes Jobim and bossa nova itself such a compelling phenomenon.

"[6] John Lannert at Billboard called the album "a critical masterpiece",[3] while The Wall Street Journal referred to Inédito as a "fully realized gem.

'"[8] In his AllMusic review of Inédito, Richard S. Ginell said, "The feeling of saudade is very much front and center on Jobim's birthday present to himself -- he later said that this was his favorite album -- and all of his connoisseurs should try to hunt it down.