For the first time Portuguese duo Rita Maria and Filipe Raposo visit Brussels with their album ‘The Art of Song: When Baroque Meets Jazz’, an exploration of the formal musical universe of the extensive baroque period by associating it with the stylistic freedom of improvisation and jazz. The project was inspired by their mutual passion for works by baroque musical geniuses such as Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach and Händel.
Through their research, Maria and Raposo discovered the many similarities that the baroque and jazz genres have; cyclical forms, harmonic structures and improvisation upon counterpoint. But above all, both genres use powerful melodies that we cherish in our emotional memory.
Rita Maria started studying music at the age of eight and has been a voice student at National Conservatory of Music in Lisbon, Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo in Porto and Berklee College of Music in Boston. She mainly explores jazz, improvisation, fado, experimental and fusion between world music and rock. She has shared the stage and recorded for a plentitude of artists and orchestras, is a beloved visiting teacher around the world and is creatively involved in her own projects, like her band Saga Cega, the trio Circle, her record label RODA and the creation and curation of Theia Festival, the first Portugese Female Festival for jazz and contemporary music.
Filipe Raposo followed his classical piano studies at National Conservatory of Music in Lisbon, jazz piano at Royal College of Music in Stockholm and classical composition at Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon. Since 2001 he works as a composer, arranger and pianist with many of the leading names in Portuguese music, theater and film. He has written original soundtracks for DVDs from the silent era (“Lisboa Crónica Anedótica”, ”Nazaré, Praia de Pescadores”) and documentaries ("Um Corpo que Dança – Ballet Gulbenkian", "O Nascimento da Arte"). Last year, he wrote his first full opera “As Cortes de Jupiter”, directed by Ricardo Neves-Neves and produced by Teatro do Eléctrico.
The resonances between jazz and baroque are innumerable. Come discover yet another DAS HAUS performance not to be missed. We’ll see you on May 13th!