An essential voice in the landscape of contemporary Portuguese singer-songwriting music, Maria has just made a safe and very important step towards the affirmation of her art having released her first solo album last year (Chove Na Sala, Água Nos Olhos), after a long militancy with her sister in the band Pega Monstro. Song by song, she drifted away from rock to a territory where pop music is used to cure her malaise and bless what life throws in her direction.

It is an immaculate album made up of seven songs capable of hammering memories to the floor with a lyricism as real as allusive and melodies that last in their sweetness or in a certain bitterness that makes everything more vivid and tangible. “Chove Na Sala, Água Nos Olhos” is as firmly independent as communal in its calling. Maria will be presenting her music solo but in the company of a string trio, proving that these songs are very capable of speaking for themselves.

This will be the presentation of a piece animated by the drummer Gabriel Ferrandini, the prodigy of electronic music Pedro Tavares and the plastic artist Alexandre Estrela. When writing about ‘Ruin Marble’, Estrela says that it is “the animation of a landscape on a blade made of ruin marble through the inscription made by a liquid influx of mineral salts, iron oxides and magnesium. The sound releases tectonic plates, causes the contraction and the expansion of the geological layers of the time that that stone holds within”. The stone is the landscape in the background, a scenario for the emanation of sound waves with a physicality capable of catapulting us back to a time when ruins preceded men.

Three figures with different life experiences and journeys reunited under this sign with their own techniques and histories. Ferrandini already has a vast and enviable curriculum and has played with numerous musicians from different genres – mainly jazz, free improvisation, but also musicians with a more liquid approach like rock or electronic. He is getting closer to his very own language which will soon result in his solo debut album with Pedro Tavares’ contribute. Although Pedro Tavares is noticeably young, he has been developing firm work in the field of electronic music through his solo work with Funcionário and the duo Império Pacífico. Finally, Alexandre Estrela, who brings along his extensive experience working with images as resonant matter through his art and the simultaneously celebrated and idiosyncratic pieces that have turned him into a singular artist.