Mateus Alves
This Brazilian cultural matrix projects Mateus Alves globally...
Curation
CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Mateus Alves
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City/Place:
São Paulo
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Country:
Brazil
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Hometown:
Recife, Pernambuco
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.
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)
This is a small-world open-curation network initially created so that magnificent but unknown (to the wide-world) Bahian artists might be eminently discoverable by humanity everywhere. However! For the Matrix to function for the Bahians it must function for ALL artists/creators:
MATRIX ONLINE NETWORK
There are certain countries, the names of which fire the imagination. Brazil is one of them, an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics...there’s no other place like it in the universe. The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix — concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
Starting point for this project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a "quilombo" is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu below — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class):
...theme music for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
From inside this Matrix, all creators-creative entities everywhere — empowered by the mathematics of network theory — become potentially discoverable by all people worldwide. Go straight to one of the (randomly selected) creators-creative entities below to see how their Matrix Page — information and media, outgoing and incoming curation — works (reload to feature other artists/creators), or find out below the black line below what unsung (metaphorically only) brilliance this is all about:
More on these profound incubators of Afro-Brazilian culture at:
Os Quilombos da Bahia
The Quilombos of Bahia
It’s like a trick of the mind’s light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (the Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.
That's where this Matrix begins:
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers worldwide.
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"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...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
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 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, 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've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) 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.
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 founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
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
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX