Bio:
Livia Mattos started her career in the circus where she gravitated towards the accordion as a stage resource.
Thenceforth, she entered the musical scene playing in various bands and performances. She debuted her solo project in 2008. Livia’s first performance was in Salvador da Bahia, and continued in São Paulo where she played in several projects in different establishments, such as Prata da Casa in SESC Pompeia, Catarse, Casa de Francisca, Virada Cultural de Sao Paulo, Projeto Viva Vila, and many others.
In 2009, she released her first EP kindly produced by Oswaldinho do Acordeom [Oswaldinho of the accordion]. In 2011, the Edital Vivaldo Ladislau (FUNCEB) sponsored Livia’s circulation project, which enabled her to perform her show in the countryside of the Brazilian northeastern state of Bahia. She performed in many important Brazilian festivals but as of 2012 Livia blossomed in international festivals such as the “Akkorden Festival Wien” in Vienna, “Accordions Around the World” in New York City, “Sommerwerft – International Theater Festival” in Frankfurt, “Festival de Forró” in Lille and Clazz, in Tallin.
Livia Mattos is part of the band of the singer-songwriter Chico Cesar in shows around the world, participating in festivals such as Conexão Latina (SP) and Grand Mix du Brésil (FR). In 2015, she toured with Chico Cesar’s band following the release of his latest album “Estado de Poesia”.
In her quest for sonority, she uses the accordion as an instrument of research and creation with enough freedom to orbit through cosmopolitan and traditional folk influences, mixing the serenades’ lyricism and the Caribbean dance as well as musical references that recalls the circus and the Brazilian northeastern cultures.
Besides her solo performance, she also presents two other thematic shows inspired by popular festivities: FOLIA DE FOLE, carnival repertoire played on the accordion, and JUNINA, traditional repertoire from Sao Joao celebrations. Livia Mattos co-created an accordion duet with the French-Portuguese accordionist Loïc Cordeone, with whom she has composed in partnership.
She works with soundtrack production for audiovisual content and shows and performances from different regions and participates in circus and musical shows. Bachelor in Sociology at Universidade Federal da Bahia she also researches about music in circus, an academic project that records interviews with veteran circus performers.
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).