André Mehmari via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from André Mehmari:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: André Mehmari
- City: São Paulo
- Country: Brazil
- Hometown: Niterói, Rio de Janeiro
My Life & Work
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Bio:
André Mehmari is considered one of Brazil's most talented musicians. His activities as pianist, composer, and arranger are highly regarded in both popular and classical music. As his compositions have been performed by leading orchestras such as Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and chamber ensembles such as the São Paulo String Quartet, his career in jazz and Brazilian popular music has attained wide attention with performances in all of Brazil's major jazz festivals and abroad at Umbria Jazz in Italy and Juan Les-Pins in France.
Born in 1977 in Niteroi (RJ), he began to study music with his mother at the age of five, and completed an organ course in the Conservatory of Ribeirao Preto (SP). At age ten, having taught himself jazz improvisation, he wrote his first compositions; and, at 15, while teaching organ in the Conservatory, he was invited to compose a method for keyboard beginners. The result was a 20-piece collection, a work greatly appreciated by young musicians and their teachers. Mehmari’s precociousness as a composer and multi-instrumentalist was well documented by the media.
He began study at São Paulo State University (USP) in 1995 and, in the same year, won the University’s competition for original Brazilian popular music (MPB). Two years later, the same honor was awarded to him for classical music. Both his performing schedule and composing activity grew busier as he began touring and writing orchestral arrangements for major musical events in São Paulo. In 1998, he won the first national Prêmio VISA de MPB competition, the most important award for popular music in Brazil. The competition's prize is the recording of a new CD, which became Mehmari's first release and brought him concert opportunities throughout Brazil.
More than twenty albums have followed, including Lachrimae (2004), featuring two different piano trios and singer Mônica Salmaso; Piano e Voz (2006) with singer Ná Ozzetti; De Árvores e Valsas (2008), devoted entirely to André's compositions; Miramari (2009), a collaboration with clarinet master Gabriele Mirabassi; Gismontipascoal (2010), with mandolin virtuoso Hamilton de Holanda and winner of the 2011 Prêmio da Música Brasileira; Afetuoso (2011), a return to his dynamic piano trio music; Canteiro (2011), a two-CD set with performances by thirteen of his favorite Brazilian singers; Triz (2012), with Chico Pinheiro and Sérgio Santos; André Mehmari e Mário Laginha ao vivo no Auditório Ibirapuera (2012), a concert recording with Portuguese pianist Mário Laginha; Angelus (2013), a collection of Mehmari's chamber music works for several Brazilian ensembles; Tokyo Solo (2014), a solo piano concert recording; Miramari (2014), a DVD of performances by Mehmari's duo with clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi; Ouro sobre azul (2014), a solo piano recording devoted to interpretations of the works of composer Ernesto Nazareth, known as the inventor of modern Brazilian piano; As Estações na Cantareira (2015), a new album for piano trio. In 2017, he has collaborated with Nailor “Proveta” Azevedo, Rodolfo Stroeter, and Tutty Moreno to create Dorival, a tribute to composer Dorival Caymmi. While each of these works offers musicians distinct from the others, they share Mehmari's blend of lyricism, dynamism, and elegance.
In 2006, he won the Carlos Gomes award for classical music revelation of the year, and was appointed resident composer for the São Paulo State Wind Band. The Pan American Games commissioned him in 2007 to compose music based on themes by Villa-Lobos, Jobim, and Chico Buarque for ceremonies at Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã Stadium; and for her Spanish Schubertiade, pianist Maria João Pires commissioned him to write Viagem de Verão. In 2008, he premiered his Jazz Concerto for piano trio and strings with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo as well his double concerto for jazz piano, clarinet, and winds with clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi and the São Paulo State Wind Band. The following year brought forth more premieres including Ballo, a full scale ballet commissioned and performed by São Paulo Companhia de Dança with choreography by Ricardo Scheir. The German network Deutsche Welle commissioned him in 2010 to create a new work for the Sinfônica Heliópolis, an orchestra organized in one of São Paulo's poorest slums and now one of the world's finest youth orchestras. Mehmari composed Cidade do Sol (City of Sun), a portrait of the orchestra itself, which it premiered at Beethovenfest in Bonn and Berlin. The Miami Symphony Orchestra commissioned to compose and perform a new concerto for two pianos and orchestra, which he premiered with pianist Christopher O'Riley in May 2015. Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais commissioned him to write Divertimento, which was premiered in December 2015. The São Paulo String Quartet commissioned Re: Cordare and premiered it in May 2016. He has been commissioned to write arrangements for the closing ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. A new work commissioned by Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Variações Concertantes sobre um tema de Ernesto Nazareth, was premiered by the orchestra in 2017 at the Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão.
His active performing calendar includes his trio, duos with singer Mônica Salmaso, mandolinist Danilo Brito, clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi, vibraphonist-percussionist Antonio Loureiro, and pianist Mário Laginha, as well as solo piano concerts. He continues to be one of the most sought-after composers in Brazil.
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://www.andremehmari.com.br/loja-shop
- ▶ Twitter: andre_mehmari
- ▶ Instagram: mehmari
- ▶ Website: http://www.andremehmari.com.br
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX7RH65s2GY5sKVUjEKbQQQ
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCYJ889DPICoSt4A_rEYbpjw
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/2Jf8enu1xDaXCycu01MSDg
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/6o4guMaPkZDLdZjVWrHgA8
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/5WJwVcHKk36EIl7uHEBCfU
- ▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/25JOrL6ohfMwdOsFs30AsS
- ▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/1mKARznoEqJezj8mxaChKC
- ▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/29zxCetRETFYntdlxEef0Y
Clips (more may be added)
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
