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BEATRIZ AZEVEDO transdisciplinary artist and researcher

Brazilian multi-artist from São Paulo, based in Rio de Janeiro and New York - “who has emerged in recent years as one of Brazil’s most innovative artists”. Performer artist, poet, director, singer and composer, Beatriz Azevedo’s artistic practice mixes the languages ​​of music, theater, literature and audiovisual.

Beatriz Azevedo holds a PhD in Performing Arts from University of Campinas, M.A in Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo (USP), and a B.A in Theater from Unicamp. She studied Music at Mannes College of Music in New York and Theater and Dramaturgy at Sala Beckett in Barcelona.

Currently Beatriz is a Membre Associé du Centre de Recherches Sur Les Pays Lusophones at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, a resident artist at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, a Visiting Scholar at Tisch Arts, New York University, and a postdoctoral researcher at UNICAMP State University of Campinas.

“Clarice Clarão” is an intimate performance that so meaningfully expresses the great beauty that is created in Brazil. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> CAETANO VELOSO [2022]

Being a “multi artist” is kind of fashion now. However, it’s rare to find an artist that is really so truly “multi” as how much Beatriz Azevedo is. In fact it is necessary to research her, she is far from making self promotion of all her talents. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BETH NÉSPOLI [Caderno 2, Estado de São Paulo]

Beatriz Azevedo has collaborated with leading Brazilian musicians, actors and artists, such as Maria Bethânia, Tom Zé, Matheus Nachtergaele, Cyro Baptista, Jaques Morelenbaum, Moreno Veloso and Vinicius Cantuária, as well as with Teatro Oficina’s tropicalist diretor Zé Celso. She created partnerships with the poet Augusto de Campos, the writer Hilda Hilst, Modernist authors Oswald de Andrade and Raul Bopp, songwriters Vinicius Cantuária and Zélia Duncan. Her musical compositions were sung by Adriana Calcanhotto, Matheus Nachtergaele, Moreno Veloso, Tom Zé, Zelia Duncan and Zé Celso Martinez Correa, among others.

Musical albuns: CLARICE CLARÃO (Selo Sesc 2022), A.G.O.R.A (biscoito fino 2019), ANTROPOPHAGIA AO VIVO EM NOVA YORK (recorded live at Lincoln Center in New York, 2015),ALEGRIA featuring Tom Zé (2008), MAPA-MUNDI SAMBA AND POETRY (Acrobeat, 2002), BUM BUM DO POETA (Nippon Crown Natasha Record, 2000).

Beatriz has performed widely throughout Brazil, Europe and the United States. In the last years, she performed at the MoMA Museum of Modern Art in New York and Lincoln Center, as well as participating in various international festivals such as Womex (Spain), Nublu Jazz Festival (New York), CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival (New York), Femmes du Monde (Paris), Mirada Ibero-Americano Festival, Popkomm Festival (Berlin), Dunya Festival (Rotterdam), Copa das Culturas (Berlin), Art Anthropophagie Aujourd’hui (Paris), Paraty International Literary Party (FLIP), Verizon Music Festival (New York), among others.

Her published work includes Transmatriarcado de Pindorama in Modernismos 1922-2022 (Companhia das Letras, 2022); Antropófago Manifesto in Antropofagias: Práticas da devoração a partir de Oswald de Andrade (Peter Lang publishers, Berlim, 2021); Abracadabra (Demônio Negro, 2019) with preface by Zé Celso Martinez Correa; Antropofagia Palimpsesto Selvagem (Cosac Naify, 2016) a new take on Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago with preface by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and drawings by artist Tunga; Idade da Pedra and Peripatético (Editora Iluminuras).

Beatriz Azevedo is a recipient of the Cité Internationale des Arts Prize in Paris, France; the Virtuose Award for Artists, New York; the Petrobras Cultural Prize, the Aesthetic Interaction Award, Brazil; she won many other prizes and grants as the Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana de Madrid, Spain, and the PostDoctoral Grant from FAPESP Research Foundation.

RECENT INTERNATIONAL PRESENTATIONS

Beatriz Azevedo and Maria de Medeiros in Paris

Concert at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, 2024

Sorbonne Université, Paris, 2023.

Malba - Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, 2022

Instituto de Estudos Avançados da USP , 2022

show AntroPOPhagia - Palácio das Artes, 2022

show Clarice Clarão - Sesc Avenida Paulista, 2022

Utopias, 100 años de vanguardia en Brasil - UBA + MALBA Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, 2022.

University of Zurich, 2021

Fundación Montemadrid, Madrid, Spain, 2021

online concert, Brazil, 2021

Amazonia Now, Harvard University, 2020

Clarice 100 years, Princeton University, 2020

Live at Sesc SP, Brazil, 2020

Tulane University, New Orleans, USA

Lincoln Center, New York, USA

Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York.

NEW PROJECTS

NOW CLARICE (audiovisual)

Invited by Princeton University, Beatriz Azevedo created and directed the audiovisual Now Clarice to celebrate 100 years of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Filmed live, the presentation brings together Beatriz Azevedo, Moreno Veloso, and Maria Bethânia.

The documentary NOW CLARICE (50') was licensed to Sesc TV SP in Brazil, and is open to other partnerships, exhibitions and international distribution.

According to the Princeton University critical review, "Blending original songs (including Azevedo’s Amar não acaba) with powerful, emotionally-charged readings of Clarice’s body of work, the luminous concert also had a very special participation of the iconic Brazilian artist Maria Bethânia reciting her favorite Clarice passages".

"Met by raving reviews, the concert was by all standards a great success. Now Clarice had a live audience of two thousand people and has already been watched by over eleven thousand viewers worldwide."

JAQUES MORELENBAUM (violoncello)
MARCELO COSTA (percussion)
BEATRIZ AZEVEDO (voice and guitar)
MORENO VELOSO (voice, guitar and plate of Bahia)
MARIA BETHÂNIA (voice)

CLARICE CLARÃO music album 2022

https://www.beatrizazevedo.com/album/clariceclarao/

"Beatriz Azevedo and Moreno Veloso's collaboration has been made with grace and peculiarity. This unique combination is the very signature of Clarice's work. The two together achieve the obscure clarity of the 20th century's greatest Brazilian prose writer. “Clarice Clarão” is an intimate performance that so meaningfully expresses the great beauty that is created in Brazil." >>>>>>> CAETANO VELOSO, 2022.

MORENO VELOSO

With the special appearance of Maria Bethânia and texts by her brother, Caetano Veloso.

MARIA BETHANIA

Cacique Raoni and Beatriz Azevedo at Parque Nacional do Xingu, 2022

C I N E M A

DEVORATIONS film essay, a feature film in process of creation

D E V O R A Ç Õ E S

Parque Nacional do Xingu. Aldeia Mehinaco. Kuarup ritual, 2022

DEVORATIONS cinema + art installation

Davi Kopenawa and Beatriz Azevedo

Urutau Guajajara and Beatriz Azevedo

For more than two decades Beatriz Azevedo is researching Anthropophagy, the ancestral Amerindian knowledge (Tupi Indians of Brazil), which served as inspiration for Oswald de Andrade's Anthropophagic Manifesto. From her research, besides the master, doctorate and post-doctorate, she wrote books, curated cultural projects and created artistic works.

Now, all this experience will converge in the film essay DEVORATIONS with the voices of the native peoples of Pindorama dialoguing with contemporary artists from Brazil.

ENCONTROS ANTROPÓFAGOS

Audiovisual program series and Art Installation

Meetings with great contemporary artists and thinkers.

Zé Celso Martinez Correa, actor and director TEATRO OFICINA

Lucélia Santos, actriz and environmentalist

Beatriz Azevedo and David Byrne in New York

Beatriz Azevedo and Caetano Veloso in Rio de Janeiro

S H O W S

S H O W S

MUSIC ALBUNS

A.G.O.R.A is an authorial project, which features new songs and guest appearances such as Moreno Veloso, Zélia Duncan and actor Matheus Nachtergaele.

“Given the country's troubled time, I felt the urgency of the call to creation. I wrote poems and songs to put art, poetry and beauty in an increasingly crude and stupid world”, comments Beatriz.

Recorded at Biscoito Fino's studios in Rio de Janeiro, the album brings together great musicians such as Bem Gil (guitars), Cristóvão Bastos (piano and accordion), Jaques Morelenbaum (cello), Jorge Helder (bass), among others. The album also features the international guest Cyro Baptista, who recorded in New York several instruments collected on his world tours with Sting and Yo Yo Ma, among others.

CRISTOVÃO BASTOS (conductor and pianist)
JAQUES MORELENBAUM (violoncello)
JORGE HELDER (bass player)
In “Toda Musa”, Zélia Duncan played her famous mandolin, an instrument that has accompanied her for decades on stages and studios.
In “Canto”, a partnership between Beatriz and Moreno, the eldest son of Caetano Veloso plays the guitar and the famous plate, used in the samba of Bahia and Santo Amaro da Purificação. Moreno Veloso also sings the song “De Repente”, composed by Beatriz.
Alongside Beatriz, award-winning actor Matheus Nachtergaele appears for the first time singing on an album, interpreting in French the composition of his friend Beatriz, with whom he shared the stage.

Comissioned by Lincoln Center in New York, Beatriz created the AntroPOPhagia presented at the Walter Reade Theater. The live recorded show later became the music album antroPOPhagia live in New York, released by Biscoito Fino in Brazil, and by Discmedi in Europe.

The repertory of the album antroPOPhagia is written and composed by Beatriz Azevedo, and collaborators. Researching the work of the writer Oswald de Andrade (1890 – 1954), author of the Antropofagia concept, (that later influenced Tropicalia, Mangue Bit, and many cultural movements in the 20th century), Beatriz Azevedo put music to many texts by Andrade.

”The extraordinary new recording by Beatriz Azevedo has it all – high literary erudition, carnavalesque exuberance, absurdist humor, and audacious experimentalism – the hallmarks of antropofagia”. – Christopher Dunn

The album also includes one song by Cole Porter and another by Tom Jobim, both songs totally recreated by Beatriz’ arrangements. “For Cole Porter, I’ve created a new arrangement for his “What Is This Thing Called Love?” through the rhythm of Jongo, (afro-brazilian slaves dance), looking to challenge the “transcriação” of an American music standard without losing the poetry of Cole’s song, which is so wonderful.”

Otherwise, in her arrangement to Jobim’s “Insensatez”, Beatriz Azevedo makes a unique version of this Brazilian standard, mixing it with Astor Piazzolla’s music, creating a dreamy collaboration of the 2 most considered genius’ of Latin American music in the 20th century, Jobim and Piazzolla, who in fact, NEVER did collaborate, even though both composers lived in New York at the same time.

Portuguese's Mistake is a poem by Oswald de Andrade set to music by Beatriz Azevedo.

The song deals with the colonization of the Americas, and says:

"when the Portuguese arrived / under a brutal rain / dressed the Indian, what a pity /

it was a sunny morning / the Indian had undressed the Portuguese".

Azevedo is an award-winning actress and poet, as well as a subversive singer-songwriter. She combines traditional Brazilian rhythms like maracatu and maxixe with some fiercely individual lyrics, tempered by beguiling musical quirkiness — hardly surprising when her band includes musicians who’ve played with Tom Waits and David Byrne. This live airing of highlights from her catalog glides between romance and the artiness of the avant-garde, and is a suitably polished introduction to the queen-in-waiting of new Brazilian pop. CHRIS NICKSON [ Wonderingsound, UK ]
Beatriz Azevedo captures the essence of traditional Brazilian rhythms without making them sound old and rehearsed, always making sure to heat things up with her own personal style. KERRY MCNEIL [CMJ New York]
"I love the word "Alegria" (joy), which starts and ends with the letter "A". For me, is a strong word - poetic, magical - and I love the meaning of joy like the name of a woman - a woman named joy that everyone hopes will return...and also joy as the pure essence of Brazil" says Beatriz Azevedo
Beatriz Azevedo sings Kurt Weill with elegance. Her version of “Speak Low” is as sexy as the singing of Anita O’Day or Billie Holiday. LAURENCE ALOIR [Radio France, Paris]

“Pelo Buraco”, music by Beatriz Azevedo with special guest Tom Zé.

Beatriz Azevedo’s position musically stands alongside Tom Zé, (Bahian, longtime inhabitant of São Paulo), Itamar Assumpção, Arnaldo Antunes, André Abujamra (Karnak), all Paulistas, all multi-artistes. With this CD, one can gauge that Beatriz is not the mistress of a certain type of culture or philosophy, nor a complicated musician. It’s Pop – not the pop music of mass-consumption – she is Pop in the sense of Pop Art. JIN NAKAHARA [JAPAN]

BUM BUM DO POETA

Bum Bum do Poeta, first CD by Beatriz Azevedo, was released in Brazil by Caetano Veloso’s label Natasha Records, in Japan by Nippon Crown Records.

Beatriz Azevedo and Adriana Calcanhotto at studio.

SPECIAL PROGRAM FOR TV BUM BUM DO POETA

MUSIC IN COMPILATIONS

Beatriz Azevedo’s music features on the compilation Brazil: The Essential Album alongside Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Elis Regina, João Gilberto and other Brazilian masters, released by the UK label Union Square Music. Also in England the CD Bossa Nova Nights contains a further two tracks by Beatriz Azevedo.

BOOKS

ANTROPOFAGIA PALIMPSESTO SELVAGEM

JOSÉ CELSO MARTINEZ CORREA - director of the Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona
She is the author of Antropofagia Palimpsesto Selvagem, a new take on Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago and Brazilian Modernism. The book Antropofagia Palimpsesto Selvagem (Cosac Naify) has preface by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and drawings by artist Tunga.
CAETANO VELOSO - singer and composer

POETRY BOOKS

Beatriz Azevedo edited the dossier Poetas Contemporâneas do Brasil, published by Unicamp and project p-o-e-s-i-a. The book features the poetry of 34 authors, including Alice Ruiz, Adriana Calcanhoto, Ana Martins Marques, Alice Sant'anna, Marília Garcia, Conceição Evaristo, Josely Vianna Baptista, Marcia Kambeba, among others.
Beatriz Azevedo also wrote the poetry books Abracadabra (Demônio Negro) with preface by Zé Celso Martinez Correa, Idade da Pedra and Peripatético (Editora Iluminuras).
Abracadabra (Demônio Negro)
Idade da Pedra and Peripatético (Editora Iluminuras).

Beatriz Azevedo alongside Caetano Veloso and Arnaldo Antunes

ACABOU CHORARE brings together texts and visual projects that reinterpret, recreate or draw inspiration from the compositions of the classic LP by Novos Baianos.
Her poetry is in the anthology Dusie 21 the contemporary brazilian poetry edition (Dusie Press, San Francisco USA), and LP Garganta, with 20 Brazilian contemporary poets.

POETRY PERFORMANCES

Peripatético poema de chão / Peripatetic floor poem

EXPERIMENTAL CINE POETRY

THEATER PERFORMANCES

CABARÉ TRANSPOÉTICO

BEATRIZ AZEVEDO + LUCELIA SANTOS

TRANSPOETIC CABARÉ is a transmedia show, which draws on the strength of all these artistic expressions in order to extend and cross borders. The term transpoetic is used to define what crosses the frontiers of the arts, combining meanings, like the concept of transcreation elaborated by the brazilian poet Augusto de Campos.

Beatriz Azevedo wanted to create a cabaret in Brazil in the 21st century, inspired by the Cabaret Voltaire of the early 20th century, and invited director Aderbal Freire-Filho to stage it.

Director Aderbal Freire-Filho created the staging based on poems from Beatriz Azevedo's new poetry book, "Abracadabra" (Demônio Negro), which in Aramaic means: "I create while I speak". Songs and compositions present in the A.G.O.R.A and Alegria albums are also performed.

“This show, it's a utopia, a way to survive a state of war without forgetting the humor, joy and subversion of art”, says Beatriz Azevedo.
Text and Music by Beatriz Azevedo. Directed by Aderbal Freire Filho, at the Sesc Pompeia theater in São Paulo, acting alongside actress Lucélia Santos and musician Jorge Helder.
ADERBAL FREIRE FILHO

MATAMOROS DA FANTASIA (HILDA HILST)

Staging the text "Matamoros da Fantasia" by Hilda Hilst, Beatriz Azevedo signs the dramaturgy and direction. She is on the stage alongside the great brazilian actress Maria Alice Vergueiro.

Beatriz Azevedo met the writer Hilda Hist at the age of 13, when she received the book "Tu não te move de ti" as a gift, which contains the text "Matamoros da Fantasia".

The writer HILDA HILST and BEATRIZ AZEVEDO

ÓPERA URBANA ZUCCO

Beatriz translated and staged the work of French playwright Bernard Marie Koltès, published for the first time in Brazil.

LE FUNAMBULE

Text by writer Jean Genet, translated by Beatriz Azevedo. Acting in dramatic readings alongside Zé Celso Martinez Corrêa.

BACANTES

directed by Zé Celso in Teatro Oficina

Beatriz Azevedo also acted in other plays by Teatro Oficina such as Ham-Let, directed by Zé Celso.

I LOVE MAIAKOVSKI & LILI BRIK

Play about the life of Russian poet Vladimir Maiakovski and his muse Lili Brik, written and directed by Beatriz Azevedo.
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