When Lucy Elias first saw the hands of her newborn daughter, all plans for naming the baby “Joseli” – in honor of St. Joseph, whose feast day fell on her birth date – flew out the window.

“She has the hands of a pianist – with long fingers. I’ll give her an artist’s name,”the mother declared of her daughter, Eliane. Mother knows best: The Brazilian jazz pianist, composer, and singer has since gone on to win multiple Grammy nominations and worldwide recognition.

A perfect stage name wasn’t the only thing Lucy bestowed on Eliane: The daughter – who is making keyboard and vocal magic along with her trio through October 16 at Le Bar Au Jazz on East 58st Street – inherited some of mother’s talent.

“My mother was a great pianist. She practiced for hours and hours when she was pregnant with me,” Ms. Elias said.

Although Ms.Elias is winding down her critically acclaimed 10-night run this weekend, anyone with an ear for Brazilian jazz couldn’t help but notice the splash she made this year.

First, there was the May release of her latest CD,”Dreamer” – her 19th solo recording and second for Bluebird Jazz – and its climb to no. 4 on Billboard and no. 8 on the jazz radio chart in America. In France, it is consistently a top-three selling album and hit the top-20 pop charts. And in Japan,”Dreamer” garnered a golden disk award.

In New York, she headlined at Joe’s Pub and, at Jazz at Tanglewood over Labor Day weekend.The latter performance was broadcast live by WBGO. And there continues to be the demanding 16-country “Dreamer” tour, which extends through next summer and is scheduled to land on two more continents – Asia and Australia.

Ms. Elias is known as one of the foremost interpreters of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Brazil’s much-loved composer and founder of bossa nova. She began playing piano at age 7 and by 12 was transcribing the solo parts from her parents’ jazz collection in Sao Paulo. “My dad trav eled and brought back a lot of records,” she said.

Yet fans acquainted with “Dreamer,” where she is featured as a vocalist, aren’t always aware of her as a piano phenomenon. After she took her seat behind the piano on a recent evening at Le Jazz Au Bar some jaws dropped as her fingers hit the keyboard.

“I was playing in California and my daughter overheard someone say ‘she is really great at keyboard. Did you know she played?'” giggled Ms. Elias. “I welcome it,” she said of her new audience, who comes for the vocals and stays for both the piano and vocals.

“I never wanted to pursue a career as a singer. I was a child prodigy as a pianist. I played classical, jazz, and Brazilian music,” she said.

Working on her earlier “Plays Jobim” album, she sang a few songs to demonstrate the arrangement to her colleagues. “‘Oh my God,’ they said,” Ms. Elias explained. “Please sing,” they begged. “I’ll do the instrumental first, on one track,” she told them. “I didn’t plan to do the singing,” she said of the last two vocal cuts. Since then, more and more vocals have crept into her work. Still, piano is where her heart is.

“Piano is a true extension of my body. There are no barriers between me and my piano,” she said. “I have total communication with the instrument. The vocals come afterwards. I sing in the Brazilian style – quiet, sensual, rhythmic.”

In addition to her playing, she is known for her compositions. “I was a composer since I was a little girl,” she said. “I always wrote – that’s part of me,” she explained.

By 15, the young pianist and composer had graduated from school and was teaching master classes in piano and improvisation at Brazil’s most prestigious music school.

“At 17 I was playing with the best people in bossa nova,” she said. Her career “was very clear at a very young age,” she explained. “I always wanted to play jazz. I had that sound in my head. I listened to more jazz than any kid in America,” she said, explaining that it was American jazz that brought her to this country in 1981.

“I live on the road,” she said, although New York and the Hamptons are her base. The Murray Hill resident, suffering a terrible cold and a slight fever during the “Le Jazz” run, prepared steaming hot tea made from garlic, ginger, lemon, and “lots of honey” on a recent afternoon before the sound check with her trio.

“I shouldn’t let anyone sit near me,” she joked, worrying about the effect of ingesting so much garlic, and unscrewing bottles of vitamins. “Vitamin C, B-complex – I’m taking it all,” she said.

“I just spoke to my doctor and he said I shouldn’t talk,” she whispered. Did she want to answer some questions via e-mail? “But I type so slowly,” she answered, and proceeded to chat on.

Her first album,”Amanda,”named for her daughter, was a collaboration with Randy Brecker, her former husband, and came out in 1984. Shortly thereafter, her solo career began. Since then she’s released over 15 CDs on Blue Note Records, all of which have topped the Billboard and Jazz Radio charts.

At her sound check at Le Jazz, guitarist Rubens de La Corte and bassist Marc Johnson (who is also Ms. Elias’s husband) rehearsed with drummer Danny Gottlieb. Ms. Elias, who is trim and has long blond hair, wore black trousers,a black-and-white top, and sunglasses as they played.

Her voice sounded stronger after the garlic concoction, but she asked the sound engineer for more microphone. “I need some magic for my voice, because I still don’t have one,” she lamented.

In what little spare time she has during the Dreamer tour, (she tries to get in at least a half an hour of exercise in each day and always stays somewhere with a gym when she’s on the road), she writes and researches her next project.”I hope to get to the recording studio next fall,” she said.

“I love New York,” said Ms. Elias, ” but I miss Brazil. Jobim used to say, ‘In Brazil, it is good – but it is bad. Here, it is bad – but it’s good,'” she translated.