Vancouver Sun: 'Celso Machado to warm Vancouver at Winterruption' Feb. 25

['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)]

"Brazil-born singer-songwriter is not letting winter turn his music grey

By Francois Marchand,
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]