O Porto
The new album of Madredeus
Hi Boys, This is a GREAT
day for music. A new Madredeus album has been released. My stereo
is now playing it and my heart has an hard work. It is a live in
Porto, a double CD (!!!!!!). This is the good sign that ever
Madredeus fan expect after the difficult moments of 1996 and
1997. Two album in 8 months, ~180 minutes of music, is the best
sign that one could expect. This album soothe the fears that
every one Madredeus fan had.
The
price is very low and the duration is very good (more than
Lisboa). The grafic presentation is elegant, as always, but a bit
low defined (the low price has a reason). However the good taste
prevails on the limits of the printing. It has been recorded very
well, the sound is great, even if is some songs the guitar of
Jose is too low, in my opinion. However, great mixing in the
complex.
The voice,.....(a minute of reflection).....is unbelievable. It is perfect. Only one little imperfection in the entire album.... incredible. Teresa has really changed her voice toghether with her physical appereance. Her body seems to follow the evolution of her voice. She IS her voice. She is much more beautiful than some years ago (Lisbon Story) and her voice is really much more strong, firm, sure. She has incredibly improved the technic and this is a great advantage for the interpretation which is becoming ....I say....."blood red". The improved technic give a great tranquility which permits to concentrate on the words and so on the interpretation. She is growing. She is.....She
What about the sound? Well, I have listened to the concert in Bruxelles of the tour of Ainda. It is better the actual one. Now the sound is more intense, strong, incisive, present, warm. Pedro was right, as always. The only thing whe should wait is a song with Teresa singing with the sound of a piano. Lets think about the mixture! It would be noble, original, intense, and beautiful. I hope to listen to such a song in the future
I have to say something
about the new songs. I have listened to them once but they are
already in my mind. Cancao do tempo and
Alvorada are two masterpiece, while Quem Amo, Alma and Os Folioes
are three little flowers. The only thing which is missing in the
album are the words of these great songs. Cancao do Tempo show
the great composing ability of Josè (my master..), while
Alvorada has a completely original structure and tempo division.
Listening to the entirety of this album, we can say the enormity
of the new repertoire of Madredeus. Enormity made of quality and
quantity, made of strenght, and creativity. This is the right
road to walk on: Pedro, Jose, Carlos, Fernando, carry on like
this. We will follow. Teresa, we will follow you everywhere.....
But all these words are vain. Listen to Nao Muito Distante, and listen how a woman can say with only two letters, Na, all the things that human language can say, all the emotions, all the feelings, All. THIS is the Woman, her Sensitivity and the sign of Her superiority. THIS is the sign.
Mail written by Corvinus to the Madredeus Mailing List
A Personal and Informal Review
O Porto, what to say about such an album,
full of surprises, new music and a completely new rediscovery of
Madredeus?
Madredeus has changed and I feel that only
O Porto can make us understand the new direction, the new aura
spreading from the new notes, ideas and chords of Madredeus. O
Paraiso has been a choc for all of Madredeus fans. Now that I
have listened so much to O Porto, now that the notes of Coisas
Pequenas in its live version wake me up every
morning (making the worst moment of the day the most intense),
now that I have been in that theatre, reconstructing my presence
there with every note listened, I can say that I
didn't understood the peculiarity of that new way of
Madredeus. I had misunderstood O Paraiso, watching it with the
eyes of O Espirito da Paz, of Ainda and of all the previous
albums. I listened to it. That is the key: I only listened to it
and Madredeus, as I always said, is not only music. It is a
complex phenomenon made up of different arts and based on all the
different feelings seen and felt by our heart.
From the "mere" music of O
Paraiso, nothing more than music appeared, and I needed more to
judge, to evaluate.
O Porto contains the music of O Paraiso
in its living shape. That music acquires life from the screams of
the people in the theatre, from the voices of the musicians, from
the gentle and misterious sound of the walking of the musicians
on the wooden stage.
Acquires life from its temporary existence
in time and space. While O Paraiso seem something like a
testament from a past civilization, O Porto is living, toghether
with its music, in its peculiarity in time, in its ability to
recreate a precise moment which is passed and is now lost like a
dead person, a loved one. But please remember that only a living
being can be dead.
The music is for this reason much more
spontaneous, lays in time like a monologue, a dialogue, flexible
and movable. The songs get life from the hint of improvisation
hidden in the executions, from the choices made for that
particular stage.
Now, the music of O Paraiso is on this
Earth.
O Porto has been one of the biggest
experiences of my life.
It is warm, incredibly thick and
tearful.
It is serene, just as the smile of
your home when you return from work. Serene as the smile of your
wife, of your woman, greeting you in the house where you live
after a day of Hate and Redemption.
It is dense as the feelings of a
whole life. It crosses the ways of the heart in their
entirety.
It is simply beautiful and also
seducing with its morbid and soft tone of guitars and
voice. Voice which can enrapture your thought in a web of
ideals, pure ideals, where age and time doesn't exist, and your
life endures the time of a song, a birth in every start, a
death in every ending..... 18 songs, 18 lifes, different
and equal in their horigin, in their feeling's matrix.
It is calm as a
narration of an old grandmother but also intense as the
real development of actions; calm as a memory, intense as
the passing of the present from the future to the past.
I listen to it and the stage appear in
front of me. Teresa is singing, I perceive her movements. The
voice seem a incense cloud over the audience, sustained by their
breath, by their living. Like a fog, it enters all the narrows
passages of the theater, and the music is the wind pushing it
along.
I imagine myself in the corridors of the
theater, while the voice of Teresa, distant in the reverberation
of the walls, appear even more present, because it seem that the
walls, the lamps, the floor is singing too. The voice is
everywhere, completely detached from the body, from the physical
existance. And I feel that also my body is singing in the soft
massage that the waves of sound makes on it. I feel like a piece
of soft clay, modeled by that sound, in a shape which I adore,
because is much more similar to my real being.
I imagine myself to be invisible, walking
silently on the stage, watching, undisturbed, the intense faces
of the musicians, watching their hands producing with short
movements contractions and expansions of my heart. I walk towards
Teresa. I am in front of her. Lost in her voice, I looked at her,
at her hands moving in an ipnotic pattern, shaping the air as
sculptures of words.
During "A Margem" she sits and I
can sit near her, and the song became a simple dialogue between
us.
Then, in a dream, I watched the audience,
listening, and I discover my face in every face I see.
Teresa's dancing is a
manifestation of joy. It is the complete fusion of a body in the music surrounding
her. When she dance, her voice seem to continue spreading
from her dresses, from her smile, from the rhytmic
movements of her arms. Nothing can express so well the
joyful and earthly feeling of that song. The music, which
is the same accompanyng the voice, appear completely
different when the body of Teresa is singing through the
dance. It seem different because it seem that it is trying
to describe what is happening on the stage. Every note is a
word of that description, accurate, precise, vague, vain.
Teresa dance and her well being make the space around her a
sustainment to her movements, which appear soft, liquid, a hot
liquid chocolate: sweet and warm. Drink it.
Madredeus de Regresso a Casa
Após a separação de dois elementos, uma nova formação, a constituição de um novo reportório, diversas confusões na imprensa portuguesa e um ano de viagens pelo mundo, os Madredeus estão de regresso a Portugal – em digressão, e com um novo disco intitulado «O Porto». Para além de óbvio Ovo de Colombo linguístico (num título particularmente dirigido ao mercado anglófono), «O Porto» foi gravado ao vivo a 4 de Abril passado e contém todas as canções do álbum «O Paraíso» (à excepção de «O Fim da Estrada»), acrescidas das restantes cinco que haviam sido gravadas nas mesmas sessões de estúdio em Zorban di Mogliano, perto de Veneza, em Agosto de 1997.
Contrariando a intenção inicial de Pedro Ayres Magalhães – que desejava publicar todo o material num disco duplo, possivelmente intitulado «Agora» – «Alvorada» (com um instrumental brilhante, a par da já conhecida «Canção aos Novos»), «Quem Amo», «Alma», «Canção do Tempo» (com as belas palavras de Rui Machado – a primeira vez em muito tempo que uma canção dos Madredeus tem a participação de um não-elemento do grupo) e o divertimento popular de «Os Foliões» foram retiradas da edição, embora tenham passado de imediato a ser incluídas no alinhamento do espectáculo.
Um ano mais
tarde, cumpre-se assim o desejo do compositor com a publicação
desta gravação exemplar, captada em directo, sem nenhumas
regravações ou dobragens, com grande brilho da cantora e dos
músicos, e leves alterações nos arranjos de «O Paraíso»
– mais nítidas no instrumento de Carlos Maria Trindade. «O
Porto» regista de forma indelével este período e inicia um
outro em que as digressões dos Madredeus serão interrompidas
pela gravidez de Teresa Salgueiro, e a carreira do grupo passará
essencialmente pela mediatização, preparando-se para os
próximos meses várias edições de material inédito do grupo,
em audio e video.
No encarte do disco
encontrar-se-á o «texto das três naus» de Pedro Ayres
Magalhães: «”O Paraíso” que o público presente no
Coliseu do Porto tão entusiasticamente saudou, é para nós a
terceira “nave musical” que o grupo Madredeus
construiu, nave dedicada a viajar pela atenção dos melómanos e
poetas de todas as nações. A viagem destas “naves
musicais” portuguesas com a bandeira dos Madredeus começou
no início da década de 90 com a nau votiva “Existir”;
continuou-se nos anos de 94 e 95 com a embarcação missionária
baptizada de “O Espírito da Paz” e afirma-se nestes
dias através da abençoada viagem da caravela latina e
fantástica a que chamámos “O Paraíso”».
Entretanto, iniciada nos passados dias 4 e 7, com os concertos no Jardim da Biblioteca da Póvoa de Varzim e no, já habitual, Adro da Sé de Viseu, a breve digressão portuguesa dos Madredeus desce hoje ao Video-estádio da Expo 98 para uma aparição durante o Festival Red, Hot &Lisbon (onde também deverão actuar a solo José Peixoto e Carlos Maria Trindade). O grupo regressará ao local na próxima sexta-feira, 17 Julho, viajando depois ao Largo do Mosteiro de Alcobaça (dia 18), à Praça Marquês de Pombal em Vila Real de Stº. António (dia 24) e ao Casino de Vilamoura (dia 25) e finalmente ao Castelo de Bragança (dia 31).
Jorge P. Pires
(Article by Jorge P. Pires, published in the weekly "Expresso")
Madredeus Returning Home
After the separation of two elements, a new formation, the constitution of a new repertoire, several confusion in the portuguese management, and a year of traveling, Madredeus are returning home with a tour and with a new album called "O Porto". Aside the obvious linguistic Columbus Egg (in a title destined mainly to the anglofon countries), "O Porto" was recorded live in the 4 of April 1998 and contains all the songs of "O Paraiso" (with the exception of "O Fim da Estrada") toghether with the 5 that were recorded in the same recording session of Zorban di Mogliano, next to Venezia, in the August of 1997.
Instead of the first intentions of
Pedro Ayres that wanted to publish all the material in a double
album, probably called "Agora", "Alvorada"
(with a brilliant instrumental, toghether with the one of Cancao
aos Novos), "Quem Amo", "Alma, "Cancao do
Tempo" (with the beautiful words of Rui Machado - the first
time after a long time that a song of Madredeus has the
partecipation of a non-element of the group), and the popular
enjoyment of "Os Folioes", were retired from
publication, but were immediately inserted in the list of songs
played in concert.
An year after that, the desire of the composer has been fulfilled with the publication of that exemplar recording, taken in direct, without overrecording and dubbings, with great shining of the singer and musicians, and takes alteration of the arrangement of "O paraiso" - much more nitid in the instrument of Carlos Maria Trindade.
"O Porto" records in an unerasable way that period and starts another one in which the tournee will be stopped for the pregnancy of Teresa Salgueiro, and the work of the group will pass through the mediatization, preparing several editions that will be released in the next months, in which will be the inedit material in audio and video.
In the booklet of "O Porto" you'll find the "Text of the three ships" written by Pedro Ayres Magalhaes: ""O Paraiso" that the public present in the Coliseu do Porto acclaimed so enthusiastically, is for us the third "musical ship" that Madredeus has built, ship devoted to voyage through the attention of the melomaniac and poet of the entire world. The voyages of those portuguese "musical ships" with the flag of Madredeus started in the first part of the '90 with the votiv ship "Existir", continuing in the years of '94 and '95 with the missionary ship baptized "O Espirito da Paz" and stop in those days with the latin and fantastic ship of "O Paraiso""
In the meantime, started in the passed days 4 e 7, with the concerts in the Jardim da Biblioteca da Póvoa de Varzim and in the abitual Adro da Sé de Viseu, the brief portuguese tour of Madredeus arrives today at the Video-estádio da Expo 98 for a partecipation to the Festival Red, Hot &Lisbon (where also José Peixoto and Carlos Maria Trindade will play as soloists). The group will return to Lisbon the next 17 Julho, traveling then to the Largo do Mosteiro de Alcobaça (day 18), to the Praça Marquês de Pombal in Vila Real de Stº. António (day 24) and to the Casino de Vilamoura (day 25) and in the end to the Castelo de Bragança (day 31).
Jorge P. Pires
Music
Institutional