Mateus Alves 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 Mateus Alves:
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
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Mateus Alves
- City: São Paulo
- Country: Brazil
- Hometown: Recife, Pernambuco
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Born in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, Mateus Alves holds a degree in music from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and a master's degree in composition from the Royal College of Music, London, UK - where he also studied composition for screen. Since 2013 Mateus has been working constantly with soundtracks for films from Pernambuco. He recently concluded, in partnership with Tomaz Alves Souza, the original soundtrack for the feature film "Bacurau" by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho, which won the Prix du Jury of the Cannes Film Festival 2019. His work combines elements from the popular music of the Brazilian northeast with the textural techniques of composers like György Ligeti, with influences that range from John and Alice Coltrane, Clóvis Pereira, Sarah Davachi and Ennio Morricone to Soft Machine, Bernard Herrmann, Mica Levi and Giacinto Scelsi.
Natural de Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil, Mateus Alves é graduado em música pela Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) e mestre em composição pela Royal College of Music, Londres, Reino Unido – onde também estudou música para cinema. Desde 2013 Mateus vem trabalhando constantemente com trilhas sonoras para filmes pernambucanos. Recentemente concluiu, em parceria com Tomaz Alves Souza, a trilha sonora original do longa-metragem "Bacurau", de Juliano Dornelles e Kleber Mendonça Filho, que ganhou o Prêmio do Júri no Festival de Cannes 2019. Seu trabalho combina materiais da música popular do Nordeste brasileiro com técnicas texturais de compositores como György Ligeti, passando por influências que vão de John e Alice Coltrane, Clóvis Pereira, Sarah Davachi e Ennio Morricone a Soft Machine, Bernard Herrmann, Mica Levi e Giacinto Scelsi.
Contact Information
- Email: mateusalvessouza@gmail.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://mateusalves.bandcamp.com
- ▶ Instagram: mateusialves
- ▶ Website: http://www.mateusalves.net
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKB1GrZlb3qiMu0KjIZDtAQ
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCTIFfBDJXcvfmRfY7Lw2NaA
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
On the album "Música pra Cinema"
Music is a force that transcends the realm of sound. The composer Olivier Messiaen worked this ability by suggesting that we listen to the "color of time" in "Chronochromie". Similarly, Mateus Alves aims to reveal the "sound of the image" in the album "Music for Cinema".
As the name implies, the album compiles the composer's soundtracks for films such as "Rodolfo Mesquita e as Monstruosas Máscaras de Alegria e Felicidade" (2013, dir. Pedro Severien), "Amores de Chumbo" (2017, dir. Tuca Siqueira) , "Brasil S/A" (2014, dir. Marcelo Pedroso) and "Aquarius" (2017, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho). With the latter two, Mateus Alves received the award for Best Soundtrack at the Brasilia Festival of Brazilian Cinema and at the Brazilian Cinema Grand Prix, respectively.
If cinema is the music of light, what the Pernambuco composer presents with this album is a sort of film of music. The tracks have a synaesthetic vitality that evokes characters, places, smells, colors, moods, images and situations full of nuances. With martial rhythms and imposing brass, "Marcha das Máquinas" translates into sound the inequalities of a country that industrialized too quickly, as portrayed in the feature film "Brasil S/A". A violent industrialization that undermined the distribution of wealth and the civil rights of the poorest. In a more textural and subtle treatment, "Lançamento do Operário Espacial" ("Brasil S/A") and "Casa de Detenção I" ("Amores de Chumbo") materialize the solitude of the worker and the melancholy of incarceration.
Synthesizing the jazz of Coltrane, the romantic music of Wagner and Tchaikovsky, waltz, minimalism, the music of northeastern Brazil and even rap, "Music for Cinema" points to a polyphonic and plural portrait of Brazil. The soundtracks of "Music for Cinema" are also the tracks for the complex scripts of our society, with their political, social and aesthetic inequalities and contradictions.
Em Português...
A música é uma potência que se expande para além dos domínios do som. O compositor Olivier Messiaen trabalhou esta capacidade ao propor a escuta da “cor do tempo” em “Chronochromie”. Por sua vez, Mateus Alves nos revela o som da imagem no álbum “Música pra Cinema”.
Como o nome indica, o disco compila as trilhas sonoras do compositor para filmes como “Rodolfo Mesquita e as Monstruosas Máscaras de Alegria e Felicidade” (2013, dir. Pedro Severien), “Amores de Chumbo” (2017, dir. Tuca Siqueira), “Brasil S/A” (2014, dir. Marcelo Pedroso) e “Aquarius” (2017, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho). Com os dois últimos, ele recebeu o prêmio de Melhor Trilha Sonora no Festival de Brasília do Cinema Brasileiro e no Grande Prêmio do Cinema Brasileiro, respectivamente.
Se o cinema é a música da luz, o compositor pernambucano apresenta neste álbum uma espécie de filme da música. As faixas possuem uma vitalidade sinestésica que evoca personagens, locais, cheiros, cores, climas, imagens e situações cheias de nuances. Com ritmo marcial e metais imponentes, “Marcha das Máquinas” traduz em som as desigualdades de um país que se industrializou rapidamente, como retratado no longa "Brasil S/A". Um progresso violento que menosprezou a distribuição de renda e passou por cima das cidadanias dos mais pobres. De tratamento mais textural e sutil, “Lançamento do Operário Espacial” ("Brasil S/A") e “Casa de Detenção I” ("Amores de Chumbo") materializam a solidão do trabalhador e a melancolia do cárcere.
Sintetizando o jazz de Coltrane, a música romântica de Wagner e Tchaikovsky, valsa, minimalismo, música nordestina como baião e até rap, o álbum indica um retrato polifônico e plural do Brasil. As trilhas sonoras de “Música pra Cinema” são também as trilhas para os complexos roteiros da nossa sociedade, com suas desigualdades e contradições políticas, sociais e estéticas.
Texto: GG Albuquerque
Clips (more may be added)
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BACURAU | Trailer Oficial
62 views
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Hora do Rango - Mateus Alves
84 views
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.
