Artist Profiles: Rodrigo Leão

Rodrigo Leão is one of the greatest Portuguese composers of his generation. This great Portuguese musician, founding member of the Madredeus group and key element of the Sétima Legião lineup, undertook his solo career in 1993 to explore new musical terrains.

For a long time, the trio Setima Legião was the passion of Rodrigo Leao: the constant presence of musicians who exchanged ideas and friendship became an aspect of their music that will never be dispensed with. Then came the days of Madredeus. Rodrigo Leão found in Pedro Ayres Magalhaes the ideal companion for his musical idea. Together they built one of the key groups of contemporary Portuguese music, Madredeus.

Meanwhile, in 1989, Rodrigo Leão made what can be considered his first solo work: the soundtrack for a film by the young director Manuel Mozos Um passo, outro passo e depois …

Four years later came the decisive test: the edition of the album Ave Mundi Luminar, under the name of Rodrigo Leao and Vox Ensemble. This initial album shows a new trajectory in the composition of Rodrigo Leao. He abandons the pop format to proceed through more contemporary sounds, closer to Sakamoto or Nyman, mixed with classical vocal and musical influences. Ave Mundi Luminar was produced by Antonio Pinheiro da Silva and features Francisco Ribeiro (vocals and arrangements) and Teresa Salgueiro (vocals), both from Madredeus, a group that Leão had just left.

In 1996, Rodrigo Leao directed another project with the editor Herminio Monteiro. The group was called Os Poetas and the disc Entre Nos e As Palabras based on a poem by the Portuguese surrealist poet Mario Cesariny. The following year he released Theatrum, his second solo album, in which he traveled to darker and disturbing territories.

Pasión is a compilation album recorded live.

In 2020, Rodrigo Leão released O Método, an album featuring original and unpublished material.  O Método asks questions instead of giving answers, invites the listener to think, to feel.

Leão described how O Método was born:  “I started looking for ideas for this new work in mid-2017, in the middle of a European tour with Scott Matthew, after the release of the CD Life is Long. As usual in my creative process, the first steps are always very intuitive and without any method. In this context we invited Italian musician and producer Federico Albanese to join us. Both Pedro Oliveira and João Eleutério realized that, in this work, it made sense to have an external ear.

That moment coincided with the invitation to compose music for an exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, ‘Cerebro – Mais Vasto que o Céu’. In this work, co-produced with João Eleutério and Luís Fernandes, we learned a lot about environmental electronic sounds, which would be very useful in this new album.“

“O Método has turned out to be the record in which I have played acoustic piano the most, which changed the overall sound a lot, in addition to making less use of the strings. We also called a 20-voice youth choir, consolidating one of my first ideas. It is a more contained, simpler, faster record. A little more spiritual too … the music itself, more ambient, takes us away from our reality. It also reflects my naive side, which I already felt in some of my previous work.

The title of this album has been changing over time, but O Método turned out to be the most obvious, because it was the album where we most looked for a method to reach an end result, but for me, it is much more interesting to feel the method in a different way; more abstract and philosophical.

Don’t we all have an internal method to try to do something, to communicate, to dream? I see in these songs many questions that have no answer. I see a child pointing to the sky: Why do we exist? Where do we go after we die? What is the meaning of life? I like my music to ask questions, even if they don’t have answers. It means that it communicates with those who listen to it, that it helps us to think and dream.”

Discography:

With Sétima Legião

A Um Deus Desconhecido (1984)
Mar d’Outubro (1987)
De um Tempo Ausente (1989)
O Fogo (1992)
Auto de Fé (Live) (1994)
Sexto Sentido (1999)

With Madredeus

Os Dias da Madredeus (1987)
Existir (1990)
Lisboa (Live) (1992)
O Espírito da Paz (1994)
Ainda , soundtrack (1995)

With Os Poetas

Entre Nós e as Palavras (1997)

Solo albums

Ave Mundi Luminar (1993)
Mysterium, EP (1995)
Theatrum (1996)
Alma Mater (Columbia, 2000)
Pasión (Columbia, 2001)
Cinema (Columbia, 2004)
Portugal, Um Retrato Social (Sony BMG Music Portugal, 2007)
O Mundo (compilation with new material) (2006)
Portugal, um Retrato Social, soundtrack (2007)
A Mãe (2009)
Equador (Farol 2010)
A Montanha Mágica (Sony Music, 2011)
La Cage Dorée (Zazi Films, 2013)
Songs (compilation with new material) (2012)
The Butler, soundtrack (2013)
O Espírito De Um País (Ao Vivo Na Assembleia Da República) (2014)
Florestas Submersas (2015)
A Vida Secreta Das Máquinas Blitz (Uguru 2014)
O Espírito de Um País (Sony Music Portugal 2014)
O Retiro (Universal Music Portugal, 2015)
Florestas Submersas (Uguru 2015)
Life Is Long (Glitterhouse Records 2016)
100 metros, soundtrack (2017)
O Aniversário (Universal Music Portugal, 2018)
Os Portugueses (Sony Music 2018)
O Método (BMG, 2020)

Author: Angel Romero

Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.