The project “O Gajo” (Trans: “The DUDE”), alter ego of João Morais (b. 1973, Lisbon) was born in 2016. João is a musician since 1988, and he had several bands in the Rock and Punk circuit such as “Corrosão Caótica”, “Carbon H” or “Gazua”.

Mixing folk, rock and fado, with modern musical influences, the compositions are something unique that can sound like fado, but is not fado, or like traditional music, but is not traditional music. He uses one of the oldest Portuguese instruments – the Viola Campaniça – a traditional root instrument with centuries of cultural history, also known as Viola Alentejana.

The first record “Longe do Chão” was out on 2017 and the last this year was released “As 4 Estações”. This collection of 20 songs in 4 EPs was edited in four moments of 2019, making each of these moments correspond to each of the four seasons of the year – Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn.

Rossio, Santa Apolónia, Alcântara-Terra and Cais do Sodré give the motto for the journey from where you leave Lisbon to the world. Not with a real destiny, certain and determined, but evocative of the many journeys and memories that inhabit the imaginary of the one who hears.

This four-part work invites the listener to experience the multiple spaces and emotional colours that are born from the plasticity of the Viola Campaniça and the creative universe of O GAJO, in all its routes, narratives and sound landscapes.

You can follow his work here.

Lula Pena is a Portuguese poet, singer-songwriter and composer of fado and world music, born in Lisbon but raised in the world, with an unique, deep voice, inspired by multiple references.

“Lula Pena’s music is a living organism. It sails on a strange ocean, bordered by continents called folk blues, flamenco, French chanson, phado (that’s how she likes to spell it), bossa nova and others, grazing them all and leaving none intact.”

Discography: Phados (1998), Troubadour (2010) and Archivo Pittoresco (2017).

“The 13 tracks of her last album often flow seamlessly into one another, so do the languages she uses (Portuguese, French, English, Spanish, Greek, Italian) to sing lyrics and poems by writers ranging from Manos Hadjidakis, Violeta Parra and herself to Belgian surrealist Scutenaire to the composers of the original Twilight Zone soundtrack and to many lesser-known names.”

You can follow Lula Pena here and here.

Joan Wasser (b. 1970), known by her stage name Joan As Police Woman, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and producer.

The concert in Teatro Diogo Bernardes was part of her European Joanthology Tour, where she inhabited the space with intimacy and elegance. For her 2019 tour she strips her sound down to its true essence, performing her songbook solo with the piano, guitar and rhythm-box station.

“Joanthology” (released on May 2019) is her first career retrospective album, a 43-song collection, with tracks from Joan’s self-titled debut EP in 2004 to her seventh album, “Damned Devotion” (2018).

She began her career playing violin with the Dambuilders and played with Black Beetle, Antony and the Johnsons, and Those Bastard Souls. Throughout her career, the musician regularly collaborated with other artists as a writer, performer and arranger, as John Cale, Beck, Damon Albarn, Lou Reed, David Sylvian, Antony & The Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright. One of Wasser’s little-known previous projects was Black Beetle, formed with the remnants of Jeff Buckley’s band after he drowned in 1997.

You can follow her work here and here.

This encounter on stage between the Portuguese-Iranian Mazgani (Shahryar Mazgani) and Sean Riley (Afonso Rodrigues), leader of the Slowriders, both talented song writers, accompanied by Victor Rodrigues Coimbra (bass), Isaac Achega (drums) and Pedro Vital (guitar), was more than playing together. The two singers reinterpreted themes from their repertoire, creating a new identity with unique arrangements for the occasion.

Them friendship and mutual artistic admiration came often during the concert.

You can follow them individual career here and here.

Everything you could say about Sarah McCoy is not enough. She is an irresistible seductress, and her radiance unearthly beautiful.

Acting as the booming front force, the singer-songwriter Sarah McCoy uses her musical and theatrical training to construct an environment rich with mood. However, all her powerful laughts and cheeky gestures can not hide the extremely vulnerable personality behind her.

Sarah McCoy, a street musician and bar pianist in New Orleans pubs where she had acquired part of her musical armor, has a range of timbres and expressive scales like no other singer on the fringes of blues, rock, pop, soul and jazz. Phenomenal is also how she suddenly puts between all the whispering, puffing, roaring in her terrific blues voice, pianistic rhythms ornaments that could have come from a Chopin nocturne.

“Blood Siren”, the first album of Sarah McCoy was edited on January 25, 2019. In juxtaposition to her growling waltzes and deadly lullabies, during the concert you could listen ballads like the bittersweet “Mamma’s Song” and the emotionally charged “Boogie man”, or powerful songs like “Creep”, “Hot shot”, “Long way home”.

You can know more about her here and follow her work here.