['The
spirit of Brazil is there, but my mind — I don’t know why — is
at the corner of Main and Broadway,’ says Winterruption performer
Celso Machado. (Photograph by:
Handout, Vancouver Sun)]
By
Francois Marchand,
Vancouver Sun
February 22, 2012
Vancouver Sun
February 22, 2012
CELSO
MACHADO
Saturday, 12:30 p.m.
Performance Works,
1218 Cartwright Street (Granville Island)
Tickets: Free, all
ages
Festival info:
www.granvilleisland.com/winterruption
“VANCOUVER —
Celso Machado has obviously not let the grey British Columbian winter
give him the blues — yet. Over the phone from his home in Gibsons,
where Machado has been living for almost 10 years, the Brazil-born
acoustic guitar player and singer-songwriter sounds like a big ray of
sunshine, even on a foggy winter’s day where the waters are a pale,
mournful silver rather than a shimmering gold.
“It has been 25
years since Machado first set foot in Vancouver, where he played the
inaugural edition of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and
then appeared again later that summer of 1986 at the Vancouver Folk
Festival. Yet the melodies have not changed, the spirit remains the
same, and if a little bit of B.C. has infiltrated his material,
Machado says it is for the better.
“'That’s a
question I always asked myself: How will Brazilian music sound in
Canada?' says Machado, who ended up moving to Vancouver in 1988.
'It’s funny because sometimes I’ll play or I’ll compose a bossa
nova and think of a corner of Vancouver. The spirit of Brazil is
there, but my mind — I don’t know why — is at the corner of
Main and Broadway. Basically all the songs I’ve composed living
here remind me of Vancouver. And now there are compositions related
to Gibsons. There are also compositions related to Europe because of
the baroque music I composed over in France and Italy [before moving
to Vancouver]. I’m inspired by looking around, by what I am seeing.
The music can be anything: It can be baroque-inspired,
Brazilian-inspired, French-Canadian-inspired. It can be anything.”
“Machado, who will
be performing at the aptly named Winterruption festival on Granville
Island this weekend, remembers his initial impressions of the city
upon his first visit. 'It was special because of the size of the
city: The size of the streets, and the mix of green spaces,' Machado
says. 'In Europe, everything was very tight and compact. That sense
of space and the parks and the shape of the sea and the mountains,
that was something unique for me, you know?'”
“Recipient of a
2008 Canadian Folk Music Award for World Solo Artist, nominated four
times for the Juno Awards and once at the Western Canadian Music
Awards, among other honours, the 59-year-old Machado first cut his
teeth playing the clubs with his brothers shortly after his mother’s
death in 1969, which was also the year he got his first guitar.”
[Celso Machado's
website is: http://www.CelsoMachado.com.
He is also featured
at AfriClassical.com]
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