Clara Sverner (August 29, 1936) is a Brazilian pianist, who has had classical education.
Born in São Paulo, Clara Sverner's interpretations are well considered by public and critics from Brazil and abroad. She had a sound education, started in São Paulo with José Kliass, that in turn studied in Berlin with Martin Krause, a Liszt pupil. She got her master's with Louis Hildebrand, at Conservatory of Geneve, where she has got a Gold Medal. She did improvement studies with Leonard Shure, an assistant to Artur Schnabel, and then at the Mannes College of Music, in New York City. While still a teenager, she won the International Wilhelm Backhaus Competition, starting a career that made her one of the most prestigious Brazilian virtuosi.
Ms. Sverner participated in recitals and concerts all over Brazil, and toured in Europe, the United States, Japan and Israel. Her programmes usually feature a repertoire that includes pieces from the old English virginalists of the 16th century, to the major composers of 20th century. She highlights, most of all, the aestethic quality, the boldness of invention and the expressive power of the pieces she performs. As such, Clara Sverner is a nonconformist artist, who never tires of enhancing, researching and daring. In the context of Brazilian classical music, she was responsible more than anyone else for the revival of the popularity of the works of Glauco Velásquez, a Brazilian classical composer of the 20th century.
Clara Sverner recorded several pieces for piano by Chiquinha Gonzaga, and thus was responsible for attracting the attention of the public to her works. Ms Sverner's fruitful partnership with the Brazilian instrumentist Paulo Moura was opened up to several musical universes, exploring works from the Brazilian popular music (like Pixinguinha), to contemporary classical composers like Almeida Prado, Gilberto Mendes, and Ronaldo Miranda, that created pieces especifically for the Sverner and Moura duo.
Ms. Sverner's discography has 25 records, available worldwide, and reflects her fine aestethical sense and her esprit d'avant garde.
Clara Josephine Schumann was a German pianist, composer and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital from displays of virtuosity to programs of serious works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a piano concerto, chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras and his Chôros. His Etudes for classical guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia, while his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to his spouse Arminda Neves d’Almeida, a.k.a. "Mindinha." Both are important works in the classical guitar repertory.
The music of Brazil encompasses various regional musical styles influenced by African, European and Amerindian forms. Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as forró, repente, coco de roda, axé, sertanejo, samba, bossa nova, MPB, música nativista, pagode, tropicália, choro, maracatu, embolada, frevo, brega, Brazilian funk, modinha and Brazilian versions of foreign musical styles, such as rock, soul, hip-hop, disco music, country music, ambient, industrial and psychedelic music, rap, classical music, fado, and gospel.
Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim, also known as Tom Jobim, was a Brazilian composer, pianist, songwriter, arranger and singer. Considered one of the great exponents of Brazilian music, Jobim internationalized bossa nova and, with the help of important American artists, merged it with jazz in the 1960s to create a new sound with popular success. As such he is sometimes known as the "father of bossa nova".
São Paulo is a municipality in the Southeast Region of Brazil. The metropolis is an alpha global city and the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. Additionally, São Paulo is the largest Portuguese-speaking city in the world. The municipality is also the world's 4th largest city proper by population. The city is the capital of the surrounding state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest state in Brazil. It exerts strong international influences in commerce, finance, arts and entertainment. The name of the city honors the Apostle, Saint Paul of Tarsus. The city's metropolitan area, the Greater São Paulo, ranks as the most populous in Brazil and the 12th most populous on Earth. The process of conurbation between the metropolitan areas located around the Greater São Paulo created the São Paulo Macrometropolis, a megalopolis with more than 30 million inhabitants, one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world.
The Carnival of Brazil is an annual Brazilian festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. During Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival", from carnelevare, "to remove meat."
Elizabeth Santos Leal de Carvalho, known professionally as Beth Carvalho, was a Brazilian samba singer, guitarist, cavaquinist and composer.
Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças, better known professionally as Céu is a Brazilian singer-songwriter whose first American album was released on the Six Degrees Records label in April 2007.
Turibio Soares Santos is a Brazilian classical guitarist, musicologist, and composer, who established himself as a performer with a wide repertoire of pieces by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ernesto Nazareth, Francisco Mignone, and by accompanying musicians like Clara Sverner, Paulo Moura and Olivia Byington on many CDs.
Clarice Assad is a Brazilian-American composer, pianist, arranger, and singer 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.
Movimento Negro is a generic name given to the diverse Afro-Brazilian social movements that occurred in 20th-century Brazil, particularly those movements that appeared in post-World War II Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Paulo Moura was a Brazilian clarinetist and saxophonist.
The Ema Gordon Klabin Cultural Foundation is an art museum located in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Officially established in 1978, it is a not-for-profit private institution, legally declared as an organization of federal public interest. It was created by the Brazilian collector and philanthropist Ema Gordon Klabin (1907–1994), with the purpose of preserving and displaying her art collection, as well as promoting cultural, artistic and scientific activities. The foundation is headquartered in Ema's former house in Jardins district, specially designed by architect Alfredo Ernesto Becker in the 1950s to hold her collection. The house is surrounded by a 4,000 square meters garden projected by Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.
Beatriz Balzi was a renowned Argentinean pianist, professor and musicologist specialized in contemporary Latin-American music.
Clelia Iruzun is a Brazilian pianist based in London.
Ruth Guimarães Botelho was the first Afro-Brazilian author to gain a national audience and critical attention for her novels, short stories, and poetry. A classical scholar, she translated works from French, Italian and Spanish and studied Greek and Latin, though her works reflected fables, folklore, herbal medicines and legends of Afro-Brazil. She established several cultural preservation societies, served as head of the Ministry of Culture for Municipality of Cruzeiro, São Paulo, and was a member of the São Paulo Academy of Letters.
Octávio Pinto was a Brazilian composer and architect. He was married to Guiomar Novaes, a major figure among twentieth-century Brazilian pianists.
Bernette Epstein, known as Yara Bernette, was a Brazilian classical pianist. Considered one of Brazil's foremost pianists of the twentieth century, she achieved international renown for her performance of Classical and Romantic works, notably those of Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, and Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, in concerts in Brazil, Europe, and the United States. She chaired the piano department at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Germany, from 1972 to 1992.
"À Primeira Vista" is a song originally recorded by Brazilian singer and songwriter Chico César for the album Aos Vivos (1995) and recorded by the Brazilian female singer Daniela Mercury in 1996, for her forth studio album Feijão com Arroz. It was produced by Alfredo Moura and released as lead single of the album by Epic Records.
Classical music in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, begins at the end of the 18th century, but this artistic field did not really begin to flourish until the middle of the 19th century, and was consolidated throughout the 20th century with the founding of several educational institutions and the proliferation of groups, interpreters and composers, projecting the city across the state as the main producer and radiator of influence. Currently Porto Alegre has a considerable audience for classical music; it is in the script of concertists of international fame, has two stable orchestras and a chamber orchestra, and numerous smaller chamber groups and vocal and instrumental soloists, as well as a large number of music schools and performance spaces. Some of its composers have known national fame. According to conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky, who was the artistic director of OSPA, "there is no greater identity in music in the world than in the population of Porto Alegre". At the same time there is a significant development in academic research and advanced professional qualification in undergraduate and graduate courses in music at UFRGS.
