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.
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.
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).