Badi Assad | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 23 December 1966 São João da Boa Vista, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Genres | Jazz, world |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, musician, composer |
| Instrument(s) | Guitar, vocals |
| Years active | 1980s–present |
| Labels | Chesky, Quatro Ventos |
| Website | badiassad |
Badi Assad (born 23 December 1966) is a Brazilian singer, composer and guitarist in the jazz and worldbeat genres.
Assad was born in São João da Boa Vista in the state of São Paulo, but lived in Rio de Janeiro until she was twelve. Her father, Jorge Assad, of Lebanese descent, plays bandolim (mandolin), and her two older brothers are the classical guitarists Sérgio Assad and Odair Assad of Duo Assad. [1]
Assad studied classical guitar at the University of Rio de Janeiro and won the Young Instrumentalists Contest ("Concurso Jovens Instrumentistas for Young Musicians") in Rio de Janeiro in 1984. [2] In 1986, she joined the Guitar Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro, headed by guitarist Turíbio Santos as conductor. In 1987, she was named "Best Brazilian Guitarist" of the International Heitor Villa-Lobos Festival. By 1987 she had played in Europe, Israel and Brazil with guitarist Françoise-Emmanuelle Denis under the name Duo Romantique. In 1988 she wrote Antagonismus, a solo performance in which she worked as guitarist, singer, actress and dancer.
She released her first solo album, Dança dos Tons, in 1988. In 1989 she was selected out of two hundred women to perform as one of two vocalists in the play Mulheres de Hollanda, a musical written by Tatiana Cobbett, based on the works of Chico Buarque de Holanda. [2] Assad has also been featured in the Heineken Concerts in 1992 with Raul de Souza and Heraldo do Monte, and in 1993 with Rafael Rabello, Dori Caymmi and Marisa Monte. [2]
In 1994, she became associated with Chesky Records and recorded the album Solo, followed in 1995 with Rhythms, which won Guitar Player magazine's readers' poll for Best Classical Album of the Year. Assad, who sings in English and Portuguese, was voted Best Acoustic Fingerstyle Guitarist by the editors of Guitar Player in 1995. In 1998 she released Chameleon . Her appearance on the French night-time talk show Canal+ was seen by over two million viewers. In July 1998, she played Europe's most renowned summer festivals sharing the stage with such artists as Cassandra Wilson, Joe Cocker, Maria Joao and fellow Brazilians Chico Cesar, Marisa Monte, and Gilberto Gil. The single, "Waves", landed in Spain's Top 10 for many weeks and was included in the soundtrack of the 2003 film It Runs in the Family .
Owing to a motor disability called Focal dystonia, she was unable to play between 1998 and 2001, but she made a complete recovery and released a collaborative album with her former partner Jeff Young in 2002 called Nowhere, and 3 Guitars the following year for the Chesky label with jazz guitarists Larry Coryell and John Abercrombie. [3]
In 2004 she signed with the acclaimed German label Deutsche Grammophon, releasing two albums: Verde (2004) and Wonderland (2006). Assad loves to re-create songs. In Verde, she brought a bossa-nova style to "One" by U2 and a tango "Bachelorette" by Björk. For Wonderland, she brought songs by Eurythmics, Vangelis, and Tori Amos into her world music style. Wonderland was selected among Britain's BBC 100 best CDs.
In 2005 she released an album and DVD with her family: Sergio e Odair Assad and Their Family – Um Momento De Puro Amor. In 2010 Badi released her first DVD, Badi Assad, which she and her husband Dimitri Vakros co-produced. It was directed by Assad's nephew Rodrigo Assad (son of Sérgio Assad). This DVD displays her live performance experimentation. In the same year she was featured performer (actress/singer) in the opera-musical Opera das Pedras, in São Paulo, Brasil, directed by Denise Milan and Lee Breuer. In 2011 she started a new project with her brothers Sérgio and Odair and their daughters Clarice and Carolina, as a quintet. They have been touring the world.
Assad was voted one of the best guitarists in the world by Guitar Player magazine. She has worked with Bobby McFerrin, Yo-Yo Ma, Sarah McLachlan, Seu Jorge, and Naná Vasconcelos. She has performed in some of the most prestigious international festivals such as Montreal Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands as well as in such theater venues as L'Opera de Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Palais de Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. She has also appeared in Farm Aid and Lilith Fair.
In 2012 Assad made her first trip to India at the invitation of the Brazilian Embassy; it was a side event of the visit of the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to represent Brazil at the IV BRICS Summit, an event that brings together the major emerging economies of the world. She also performed with the Ballet Teatro Castro Alves at the Venice Biennale. In November she released her first independent and authorial album Amor e Outras Manias Crônicas through her own label Quatro Ventos. APCA (São Paulo Association of Art Clinics) – one of the most important awards in Brazil since 1972 – recently awarded her for her work in songwriting and composition. The same evening the Brazilian Marisa Monte also graced the same stage.
In 2013 Assad released Between Love and Luck in U.S. and her song "Pega no Coco" won the first prize as the Best World Music in the U.S. Songwriting Competition. In 2014, she was invited to be the co-curator of the New York Guitar Festival and committed to compose the soundtrack for the Chinese silent film The Goddess, playing it live at Merkin Hall in New York. Jon Pareles of The New York Times said Assad "arrived with a headset microphone and an electric guitar (which could simulate acoustic-guitar tones) that had a drumstick under the strings, lifting them away from the frets. The first sounds she played...were sliding pitches suggesting a koto; soon she was plucking and tapping ethereal chords on both sides of the drumstick and then cooing, in a voice like affectionate baby talk, about innocence and mysticism...She continued with Brazilian pop songs transformed by her imaginative virtuosity, moving from gauzy delicacy to vigorous propulsion, from dreaming to dancing and back."
Egberto Amin Gismonti is a Brazilian composer, guitarist and pianist.
Antônio Pecci Filho, better known as Toquinho, is a Brazilian singer and guitarist. He is well known for his collaborations, as composer and performer, with Vinicius de Moraes.
Luiz Floriano Bonfá was a Brazilian guitarist and composer. He was best known for the music he composed for the film Black Orpheus.
Brazilian rock refers to rock music produced in Brazil and usually sung in Portuguese. In the 1960s it was known as iê-iê-iê, from the Portuguese transcription of the line "Yeah, yeah, yeah" from the Beatles song "She Loves You". English-language Brazilian rock bands such as Sepultura, Angra, Viper, Krisiun, Far from Alaska and Wannabe Jalva have gained popularity in recent years.
Larry Coryell was an American jazz guitarist.
Jeffrey "Jeff" Young is an American guitarist. He graduated from Musicians Institute in 1985, and is best known for his time with the thrash metal band Megadeth, appearing on the 1988 album So Far, So Good... So What!. In 1998, Young co-wrote, produced and played on the world-fusion album Chameleon by Badi Assad. In addition to his subsequent music projects, he served as an author in Guitar for the Practicing Musician.
John Laird Abercrombie was an American jazz guitarist. His work explored jazz fusion, free jazz, and avant-garde jazz. Abercrombie studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. He was known for his understated style and his work with organ trios.
Marco Pereira is a Brazilian classical guitarist. He was born in São Paulo and took lessons from Isaias Savio, an important Uruguayan guitarist and teacher who brought Miguel Llobet's technique to Brazil. Pereira obtained his master's degree at the University of Paris-Sorbonne; his thesis was titled Heitor Villa-Lobos and His Work for Guitar. He teaches harmony, composition arranging, and improvisation at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Pereira has released several solo CDs, including Dança dos Quatro Ventos, Elegia ,Brasil Musical, Valsas Brasileiras, Luz das Cordas, O Samba da Minha Terra, Camerístico, and Cristal, Original, "Stella del Matino" and "Essence". His compositions were issued by the publishers Éditions Lémoine of Paris and Guitar Solo Publications of San Francisco.
Sérgio Assad is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger who often performs with his brother, Odair in the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad, commonly referred to as the Assad Brothers or Duo Assad. Their younger sister Badi is also a guitarist. Assad is the father of composer/singer/pianist Clarice Assad. He is married to Angela Olinto.
Obrigado Brazil is a music album by Yo-Yo Ma.
Jamey George Haddad is an American percussionist who works primarily in the fields of jazz and world music and specializes in hand drums.
Romero Lubambo is a Brazilian jazz guitarist.
Celso Machado is a Brazilian world music guitarist, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist who lives in Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada. For over forty years he has performed on concert stages throughout Brazil, Western Europe and Canada, as well as in the United States. He is active as a teacher, composer and recording artist. According to his biography, he has played onstage with guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad, Badi Assad, Romero Lubambo, Yamandu Costa, Cristina Azuma, Peter Finger, and Solorazaf and has been an opening act for Brazilian jazz musicians including Gilberto Gil and Bebel Gilberto.
Clarice Assad is a Brazilian-American composer, pianist, arranger, singer, and educator from Rio de Janeiro. She is influenced by popular Brazilian culture, Romanticism, world music, and jazz. She comes from a musical family, which includes her father, guitarist Sergio Assad, her uncle, guitarist Odair Assad, and her aunt, singer-songwriter Badi Assad.
The Quaternaglia Guitar Quartet (QGQ) is a classical guitar ensemble from São Paulo, Brazil, founded in 1992. The Quartet has become a reference both for its artistic excellence and for its contributions to the expansion of the guitar quartet repertoire. Quaternaglia has developed a canon of original pieces and arrangements with the collaboration of a variety of composers such as Egberto Gismonti, Leo Brouwer, Javier Farías, Sérgio Molina, Almeida Prado, Sergio Assad, João Luiz, Paulo Bellinati and Marco Pereira Quaternaglia’s current members are Sidney Molina, Thiago Abdalla, Fabio Ramazzina and Chrystian Dozza.
Café is the stage name of Edson Aparecido da Silva, sometimes credited as Edson da Silva or Café da Silva, a percussionist, singer, composer, and music producer born in Villa Maria, São Paulo, Brazil. He moved to the U.S. in 1985.
Norman Chesky is a music entrepreneur and executive producer of two Grammy award winning albums. He is the co-founder and co-owner of Manhattan Production Music and Chesky Records. Chesky also co-founded HDtracks, a music download service. He was a Trustee of the Recording Academy and is a co-founding member of the Production Music Association (PMA).
Ao Vivo no Mosh is the debut album by Brazilian post-punk band Smack. Recorded live at the Estúdios Mosh in São Paulo, it was released in 1985 by Baratos Afins.
Uppsala International Guitar Festival(Swedish:Uppsala internationella gitarrfestival) is an annual music festival in Uppsala, Sweden. The festival was founded in 2003 and was then attended by 200 persons, but had by 2010 grown to more than 6,000 visitors, and 300 performers. The festival includes concerts, seminars, workshops and a guitar fair, and the main activities of the festival are housed in the main concert hall Uppsala Konsert & Kongress.
Chameleon is an album by the Brazilian musician Badi Assad, released in 1998. Assad sang in both Portuguese and English. The album was an international success.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
