CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
André Mehmari
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City/Place:
São Paulo
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Country:
Brazil
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Hometown:
Niterói, Rio de Janeiro
Life
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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.
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
From Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, the unprecedented integration of the creative economy. Creators planet-wide positioned within reach of each other and the entire world by means of technology + small-world theory (see Wolfram above). Bahia was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history. It was refuge for Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition. It is Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a sociocultural matrix which is all of these: a small-world matrix. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. This technological matrix is small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX