MariaBerasarte

Born in San Sebastian, Maria Berasarte studied classical singing in Madrid. She discovered the songs of Amalia Rodrigues by chance, as a student, and decided to sing fado in her mother tongue. A true challenge, that she knew more surprising than a French singing american rocknroll or an Italian playing Argentinian tango. She started to work with guitarist Jos Luis Monton, acclaimed flamenco player, and Jos Peixoto (former member of Madredeus). This trio re-arranged fados, based on poems translated into Spanish by Tiago Torres da Silva, great Portuguese poet and friend of Amalia Rodrigues. The result of this collaboration is a first disc, todas las horas son viejas, released in Spain in 2008. Six years after, Maria wanted to keep working on fado, but adding all the folklores of the Iberian peninsula, from Spanish popular songs (piensa en mi), basque (txoria txori) to flamenco tunes, into her repertoire. The outcome is aguaenlaboca, recorded between San Sebastian, Lisbon and Paris, released in France in February 2014 (Accords Croiss Label).

Aguaenlaboca is a both simple and very daring, cutting-edge piece. Marias singing challenges the traditional conceptions of fado and flamenco voices, and the usual moods associated to Portuguese and Spanish languages. Aguaenlaboca shows us that Spanish language do conveys saudade too, and that not all fado themes are melancholic. As Maria puts it:  Geographically, Spain embraces Portugal. But, for many years, we turned our backs to each other. As daughter of a Galician woman, I guess I recognized myself in the atlantic melancholy of fado. Theres a lot of Fado within me, but not only. That is what I intend to show on this album. 

Live Line-up is :

Maria Berasarte - vocals

Jos Luis Monton - flamenco guitar

Jos Peixoto - classical guitar

Fernando Judice - acoustic bass

Jorge Tejerina - percussions