The Porto band Canto Nono will celebrate live the work of José Mário Branco (1942-2019), its artistic director for two decades. It will be in April 2023, at Coliseu do Porto.
Nuno Pacheco, Jornal Público
The announcement is made this Saturday, because tickets are now on sale, but the show is scheduled for April 28, 2023, at the Coliseu do Porto Ageas. It is a celebration, by the a capella group Canto Nono, in an unprecedented concert, of the work of the singer and composer who was its artistic director over two decades, between 2000 and 2019. It is entitled A Força (o Poder) da Word, A Canto to José Mário Branco and, according to the communiqué released by the group, “it will not be, in any way, an anodyne replacement of the repertoire, rather a 'reconstruction' of work already performed, now with new approaches, new forms of expression , because the whole world is made up of change.” Hence, in addition to taking advantage of “some of the arrangements that Zé Mário made of his songs for Canto Nono, some of which are being premiered”, they will also include arrangements that he made for songs by other authors, such as O que ser, by Chico Buarque, or Etelvina by Sérgio Godinho, as well as arrangements by musicians with whom José Mário Branco worked (“and whom he liked a lot”) and which Canto Nono now invited for this purpose, such as Amélia Muge, José Martins, Tomás Pimentel, José Manuel David or Philip Raposo.
Founded in 1992, with four female and four male voices, Canto Nono has a repertoire based on a capella singing, without any instrumental accompaniment, although its work also includes “projects with Jazz instrumentalists, namely Carlos Azevedo, António Augusto- Aguiar, António Ferro, Quiné, among others”. With two albums recorded under its own name (Canto Nono, 1997; and O Porto a Oito Vozes, 2003, which resulted from a homonymous show with musical direction by José Mário Branco), the group has already toured numerous stages, in the country and abroad, and, maintaining the initial structure of an octet, it is formed by Dalila Teixeira, Joana Castro, Diana Gonçalves, Daniela Castro, Lucas Lopes, Jorge Barata, Rui Rodrigues and Fernando Pinheiro, who has remained in the group since the beginning, when they started working with the North American arranger (and tenor) Ward Swingle, founder of the Swingle Singers, who would be decisive for the evolution of the group.