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.
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."
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.
With the special appearance of Maria Bethânia and texts by her brother, Caetano Veloso.
NEW PROJECTS
Cacique Raoni and Beatriz Azevedo at Parque Nacional do Xingu, 2022
DEVORATIONS film essay, a feature film in process of creation
Parque Nacional do Xingu. Aldeia Mehinaco. Kuarup ritual, 2022
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
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.
ANTROPOPHAGIA
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
“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]
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.
ANTROPOFAGIA PALIMPSESTO SELVAGEM
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.
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.
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.
EXPERIMENTAL CINE POETRY
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.