Bio:
Instrumentalist, singer, composer, arranger and producer, Celso Fonseca was born in Rio de Janeiro and started to play his first chords when he was quite young, on an acoustic guitar borrowed from his uncle. As a songwriter, he has written songs recorded by such artists as Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Marcos Valle, Carlinhos Brown, Maria Bethania, Vinicius Cantuaria, Nana Caymmi, Luiz Melodia, Daniela Mercury, Clara Moreno, Ney Matogrosso, Bossacucanova, Antônio Chainho, Ana Carolina, Samantha James, among others.
Celso has fourteen critically acclaimed solo albums: Minha Cara (1986), O Som do Sim (1993), Sorte (1994), Paradiso (1997) and Juventude/Slow Motion Bossa Nova (which had 3 times Latin Grammy nominations in 2002), Natural (2002) - released by Ziriguiboom / Crammed discs, Rive Gauche Rio (2005) – Nominated by The Sunday Times as one of the best 10 albums of the year, Polaróides (2006), Feriado (2007), Celso Fonseca Ao Vivo, (2008 – Live CD and DVD with special guests as Gilberto Gil and Ana Carolina), Página Central, with Marcos Valle (2009 - original songs written with the legendary songwriter Marcos Valle), Celso Fonseca, Voz e Violão, (2010 – CD and DVD with solo performance covers of classic Brazilian and International songs) , No Meu Filme (2011) and Like Nice (2015) (four times nominated for the Latin Grammy 2016).
Celso Fonseca tours the world with his band, playing in Europe, the US ,and Japan.
He was the second Brazilian artist to be on “Later with Jools” the acclaimed music show on BBC. In 2014 and 2016 he performed in Moscow together with Marcos Valle at Tchaikowsky Hall with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, playing his originals and a couple of Brazilian classics.
The artist has collaborated with some international artists like the legendary Italian songwriter Tony Renis, with the Uruguayan Oscar-winner Jorge Drexler, the Italian singer Chiara Civello and the American singer-songwriter Samantha James.
Celso recently wrote a song with Erika Ender, one of the songwriters from the mega worldwide hit “Despacito” for his new album Turning Point, released through Universal Music.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).