Dzintari Concert Hall on June 28 Latvian Radio big bands will perform with two outstanding, world – renowned jazz artists – Portuguese singer Mary Mendes and American pianist, composer John Bysley.
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According to Indra Vilipsōne, a spokeswoman for the concert hall, the two artists have created a program inspired by fado music, which has delighted listeners, attracted the attention of music critics and won several prestigious awards. John Bisley’s original compositions will be performed alongside it.
Maria Mendes is a Portuguese diva with a wide range of musical interests – she has excellent jazz and latino music, sings pop music and can give her clear voice a fad, writes the concert organizers. She has studied jazz in New York, Brussels and Rotterdam, performed at the Concertgebow in Amsterdam, the prestigious Montreux and North Sea Jazz Festivals, and was the first Portuguese artist to perform at the legendary Blue Note Jazz Club in New York as an evening. She is the first Portuguese woman to receive a Grammy nomination.
The singer seduced the Latvian audience already in 2020, when she performed in a joint program with the Latvian Radio Big Band. Inese Lūsiņa wrote in a review for the newspaper “Diena”: “Marija Mendeša is a very charismatic and sunny artist. Her timbre is not a brisk voice, but it is a brilliant and amazingly agile instrument – just like a trumpet, whose bright, precise peaks can be compared to both the most excellent opera color soprano and the most mastered trumpeters. In turn, the master of opera opera (buffo basi) could envy Maria Mendesh’s diverse, surprisingly virtuoso sketch technique, in which the singer is both intonally perfect and open to the most daring improvisations. “
In his turn, one of the greatest jazz greats of today, pianist and composer John Beasley, has performed with the Latvian Radio Big Band in 2017 at the festival “Ritmi Rīgas”.
He has collaborated with jazz legends such as Mailz Davis, Stylie Dan, James Brown, Freddie Hubard and others. At the age of 24, John Bysley began writing music for the famous Paramount, Disney and MGM studios. At the age of 28, Biesley received a call from Mailz Davis himself inviting him to join his ensemble. The artist has given concerts at White House ceremonies, and is a nominee and winner of several Grammy Awards.
The concert will feature the painful Portuguese folk song “Asa Fechadas”, unveiled to the jazz world by John Bysley and Maria Mendes, and their performance was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement in 2021. . We will also hear other compositions from their joint album “Close to me” (2019), which won the prestigious “Edison” award. The album is like a courageous love letter to Maria Mendes’ native Portugal and fado music, which is full of joy and long string. With John Bysley’s arrangements, they have created a unique encounter of jazz and fado music, which is accompanied by painful serenades, lively jazz rhythms, unpredictability of improvisation, sensuality and references to sympho jazz. John Bysley says: ” I was fascinated by the lyrics of these songs, and my instinct as a film composer was to arrange each song as a whole film. And with Mary’s voice, which penetrates deep into the soul and evokes a wide range of emotions, listening to all this, you will experience unprecedented beauty and artistry. “
Concert tickets are available “Ticket Paradise” box offices.
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