CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Mariza

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

Mariza, Vocalist
LOUÍS GUERREIRO
ANTÓNIO NETO
JOAO PEDRO RUELA
VASCO SOUSA

Singing sensation Mariza returns to Carnegie Hall with her unique interpretation of fado—Portugal’s urban folk tradition—and an irresistible flair for showmanship.

Program Notes:

Jeff Tamarkin on
Mariza

If Portugal claimed a national music, it would be fado, and no singer has done more in recent years to popularize and modernize this glorious, ages-old art form than Mariza. By its very nature, fado is an emotional music fraught with drama, sadness, yearning, and joy, and the magnetic Mariza innately understands and projects those qualities both on stage and on her much-loved recordings. The word fado literally means fate, and it has been Mariza’s fate to uphold the music’s rich traditions while simultaneously bringing fado into the present. Born in Mozambique, Mariza Reis Nunes grew up in Lisbon among the fado tavernas, steeped in the cultural and historical atmosphere that birthed the music centuries ago, and she credits her own mixed African-Portuguese heritage with drawing her to fado and inspiring her unique contemporary slant on the style. A striking, mesmerizing figure with a commanding stage presence and a voice that can only be described as a gift, Mariza is a fadista queen for the 21st century.

Jeff Tamarkin, a veteran music journalist, is the Associate Editor of JazzTimes magazine.

Mariza, Vocalist
Mariza, born in Mozambique, moved to Portugal at an early age, where she was raised in Lisbon’s old Mouraria district, often said to be the birthplace of fado. It was there that she first heard the songs of the fadistas, whose voices were so much
a part of the fabric of her daily life that, to this day, she is reminded of them each time she sings.

From the start of Mariza’s recording career, with her 2001 debut release, Fado em mim (Fado in Me), Mariza has earned both critical and commercial success. That album has reached triple platinum sales in Portugal, and, with its international release in 2002, introduced Mariza to the world outside her adopted home country.

That year, Mariza’s energetic performances were enthusiastically received throughout the world. At the 2002 Quebec Summer Festival she received the award for Most Outstanding Performance. She performed in New York’s Central Park, at the Hollywood Bowl, the Womad Festival, and at a sold out concert at the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank, before conquering a wider British audience with her performance on Jools Holland’s legendary television show. She was also named Best European World Music Artist by BBC Radio 3.

Mariza released her second album, Fado Curvo (Curved Fado), in 2003, surpassing all expectations. The album reached number six on Billboard’s world music chart, and at home, during a major slump in overall CD sales, went double platinum, far outselling all other contemporary fado records. German critics awarded her the Deutsche Schalplatten Kritik Award, and in Portugal, foreign journalists voted Mariza Personality of the Year, recognizing her as one of the best-loved artists in the country.

In 2004, she released her first DVD, Mariza: Live in London, a video recording of her concert at London’s Union Chapel. She was also featured on Unity, the official album of the Olympic Games, on which she sang the duet “A Thousand Years” with Sting, and was honored with the European Border Breakers Award at the international music trade show MIDEM.

It has been said that fado makes its way in the world through the transparency of its lyrics, a tradition to which Mariza pays homage with her latest album, Transparente (Transparent). As always, the passion with which she sings the words of poets is clear. Her emotional interpretations of poetry are made within the context of a musical form that is at once both traditional, yet very much alive. Proving that Mariza’s ties to fado remain as strong as ever, the record pays tribute to legendary fadistas Fernando Maurício, Carlos do Carmo, and Amália Rodrigues.

In 2005, Mariza was chosen by the Kingdom of Denmark as an international ambassador of the work and in the spirit of Hans Christian Andersen. She was chosen both for her renown in Portugal and abroad, and because fado, like the work of Hans Christian Andersen,
has a certain poetic melancholy that makes its appeal universal.

Since her debut, Mariza has performed on four continents with great success and full houses, at venues like Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Albeniz Theatre in Madrid, the Teatro Grec in Barcelona, the Macau Cultural Centre, and Moscow’s House of Music, as well as at festivals like Lisbon’s Rock in Rio, the Cairo International Song Festival, the Chicago World Music Festival, and the San Francisco Jazz Festival. Through all of this, Mariza continues to see the stage as an intimate space, a sort of living room where she might entertain her friends, exuding a warmth to which audiences throughout the world have responded in kind.

LOUÍS GUERREIRO

ANTÓNIO NETO

JOAO PEDRO RUELA

VASCO SOUSA