Bio:
Michael Pipoquinha was born in 1996 in the city of Limoeiro do Norte, in the state of Ceará, Brazil. He began playing guitar at the age of 10 but soon fell in love with bass. He learned to play by watching video lessons under the guidance of his father, Elisvan Silva, bassist.
In 2008, he was awarded with a scholarship at Integral Project Cultivating Talent, Beto Studart Foundation in partnership with the Music Conservatory Alberto Nepomuceno, institution of higher education in Music of Ceara, doing lessons in piano, musical perception, and coral.
Also in 2008, Pipoquinha was watching the show from his great idol Arthur Maia, great Brazilian bassist. That day he had the opportunity to meet his biggest influence and played with him on stage. The next day, performed alongside his idol at his workshop.
That same year, he scored the highest in the selective of the Bass Festival Fortaleza Brazil, and played along side great names of Brazilian bass, including Celso Pixinga (SP), Adriano Giffoni (RJ), Ebinho Cardoso (MT), Mauro Sergio (MA), Braulio Araujo (PE), Micah Santana (SP), and Sergio Groove and Jr. Primata (RN). Pipoquinha was becoming known among the musicians. In the same year, participated in the Music Fair Fortaleza again.
The following year, Pipoquinha was invited to attend the concerts of Nelio Costa and Arthur Maia at the X Festival of Jazz and Blues Guaramiranga (CE), and at the largest festival of Jazz and Blues of Latin America, the Rio das Ostras Festival in Jefferson Gonçalves and Big Time Orchestra shows. Another great event was being part of the DVD recording from another great brazilian bassist, Sérgio Groove.
-In 2012 he joined the group of brazilian modern jazz, BR TRIO, accompanying Isaac Negrene (guitarist) and Elthon Dias (drummer). The BR TRIO made presentations in Uruguay , Argentina and Colombia, participating in Jazz la Calle Festivals and various presentations. He also conducted several workshops throughout Brazil with Alexandre Aposan (drummer) and also alone.
-In 2013, he was invited by Arthur Maia again, for playing at Rio das Ostras Festival, where he met such greats bassists as Stanley Clark and Victor Wooten, being recognized and mentioned by the idols at medias as Bass Player Magazine. Also performed as headliners at the Gospel Jazz Festival in Colombia.
Also participated as a guest in Power Trio Festival, sponsored by Guitar Player Magazine. Plus dozens of workshops throughtout Brazil.
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).