Passaros

Music is always the best way to bridge distances and promote great partnerships. And to prove this theory, Europe will be the witnessing the great gathering between Portuguese singer Maria João and Brazilian pianist and composer André Mehmari. A concert full of surprises and dreams, which promises to create a new chapter in the history of this duo. Mehmari's repertoire includes new songs composed especially for his duo with Maria João, which will be released on an album on 19th July 2024, by Galileo Music Germany, with lyrics created by Maria João.

"As a descendant from both a family and country of mixed origins, I have always admired the richness that such blend produces. I have always been a searcher of union, of unity in diversity; always rooted in my Brazilian soil. As a friend of creation, the composition would clearly reveal its source of national belonging. Julio Falavigna and Antonio Porto have given me hands and together we’ve been threading various territories. Their own stories have brought me new horizons, so my Brazilian heart could feel many of the different saps that were already pulsating inside this composing tree of mine. I’ve let myself out to navigate onto faraway and primordial lands. And the heart has recognised itself as transatlantic, unveiling seas, yet just like the tree, maintaining its eternal root and original harbor."

Though it seems too obvious to refer to any Portuguese artistic movement as an expression of the inevitable saudade, the truth is that the art of Madredeus is a very good sample of that emotion of longing, nostalgia and despair. According to Pedro Ayres, composer and soul of the group “ the saudade is a state in which the person allows himself to feel contradictory feelings and to cherish non orthodox thoughts about love, life and time. The saudade is the key and the reason of our music”.