20 years of career, 20 years of music. 20 years of a journey that began discreetly, as an almost hidden local phenomenon, shared only by a small circle of Lisbon admirers. And that made Mariza, and her extraordinary voice, one of the most applauded stars on the world music circuit. And a true ambassador of Fado who does not hesitate to take you along new and daring paths, without ever losing sight of your soul. 

No other Portuguese artist since Amália Rodrigues has built an international career with similar success, accumulating success after success on the most prestigious world stages, enthusiastic references from the most demanding music critics and an endless succession of international awards and distinctions._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b -136bad5cf58d_

As always, his musical partners continue to be only the best: Jacques Morelenbaum and John Mauceri, José Merced and Miguel Poveda, Gilberto Gil and Ivan Lins, Lenny Kravitz and Sting, Cesária Évora and Tito Paris, Vanesa Martín and Sergio Dalma, Rui Veloso and Carlos do Carmo,. And her repertoire, while remaining firmly anchored in classic and contemporary Fado, has expanded to include Cape Verdean mornas, Rhythm & Blues classics and whatever other melodies she holds dear.

It all started with her debut album, Fado em Mim, released in 2001, which quickly led to numerous highly successful international performances – the Quebec Summer Festival, where she received the First Prize (Most Outstanding Performance), the Central Park of New York, the Hollywood Bowl, the Royal Festival Hall, the Womad Festival – and which ended up earning him the BBC Radio 3 award for the Best European Artist in the field of World Music. Fado em Mim already revealed its strong artistic personality – singing several hits from Amália's repertoire in such a personal way that it easily dismissed any suggestion of mere imitation. And within its original repertoire, “Ó Gente da minha Terra”, by the young composer Tiago Machado, quickly became a huge success. Their first album would reach 6 Platinum.

In 2003, his second album, Fado Curvo, was released, which would again reach the 6 Platinum Record mark. A step forward in the process of reinforcing his personal style and his own repertoire, with the help of excellent arrangements by Carlos Maria Trindade. Amália was still present, with her emblematic Primavera, on a poem by David Mourão Ferreira, but so was José Afonso, an icon of the democratic opposition to the Salazar regime in the 60s and 70s, and much of the remaining material was new and inspired._cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_

Fado Curvo would eventually reach 6th place on the Billboard World Music chart and win the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and the European Border Breakers Award, awarded at MIDEM in 2004. Mariza's public performances multiplied, with great personal triumphs at the Royal Festival Hall in London, at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, at the Théâtre de le Ville in Paris, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra), at the Teatro Albéniz in Madrid or at the Teatre Grec in Barcelona._cc781905-5cde -3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_

 

His style can be seen on his Live in London DVD, recording a March 2003 recital at the Union Chapel, and it demonstrates his impressive vocal skills and growing self-confidence on stage. In 2004, together with Carlos do Carmo, she was appointed by the Mayor of Lisbon to be an Ambassador for the Candidacy of Fado on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which would be approved by UNESCO in November 2011.

2005, the year in which she received the Amália Rodrigues Foundation Award for Best Interpreter and was appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, would be a particularly notable year for Mariza in the artistic field, with the release of her third studio project, Transparente. In this album, 4xPlatina, a new and more mature facet of her would emerge, so sure of her vocal talents that she could now afford to demonstrate her full powers, impressing with her serenity and intelligence, articulating the text in an even more expressive. She knew how to find the opportunity to honor three great fado singers with whom she feels deep artistic and personal affinities: Amália, Fernando Maurício, with whom she herself had sung several times in the Mouraria neighborhood where they both lived; and Carlos do Carmo, whose advice Mariza always recognized as an important formative factor in her artistic personality. 

A CD and a DVD of his anthological concert in Lisbon in September 2005, with the accompaniment of the Sinfonieta de Lisboa conducted by Morelenbaum himself, would be released in 2006 and would reach, CD and DVD, a total of 5 Platinum awards. In the same year, she would receive from the hands of the President of the Republic, Jorge Sampaio, the rank of Commander of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.

Mariza's career would continue from then on with greater success than ever, with constant performances on the most important stages in the world: the Olympia in Paris, the Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Festival Hall in London, Le Carré in Amsterdam , the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles – in the latter case with a set design specially designed for this purpose by none other than Frank Gehry .

In 2007, he was one of the main stars of the film Fados, by Spanish director Carlos Saura, shown in almost one hundred countries, and starred in the documentary Mariza and the History of Fado, produced for the BBC by music critic Simon Broughton. In the following year, he participated prominently in the first documentary series on Portuguese public television about the History of Fado, Trovas Antigas, Saudade Louca, narrated by Carlos do Carmo with a script by Rui Vieira Nery.

Also in 2008 came his fourth album, Terra¸ with musical direction by José Limón, bringing together the new repertoire he had performed on his most recent tours, with hits such as “Alfama” and “Rosa Branca” and partnerships with Tito Paris, Concha Buika, Ivan Lins and Dominic Miller. “Terra” is already Triple Platinum.

2010 would be the year of a very special project, Fado Tradicional, (Double Platinum), in which Mariza would reaffirm her connection to the most authentic tradition of classic Fado, returning to some of the most outstanding composers in the history of the genre, such as Alfredo Marceneiro, although with an openly individual and contemporary interpretative approach. That same year, she was awarded the rank of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government.

After a Best Of, also triple platinum, released in 2014, bringing together her most striking themes and including, among three unpublished ones (one of them O Tempo Não Pára) “Smile” by Charlie Chaplin recorded with Ivan Lins, Mariza published in 2015 Mundo , an album that reached the Double Platinum Record and was number 1 in sales in Portugal. In this album we find, among other great themes, a song that is today one of the greatest hits of Portuguese music “Melhor De Mim”, which is today an inspiration for many people.

In 2018 Mariza, the album on which Matias Damásio or Héber Marques recorded, spent nine weeks at number one on the sales charts; the video for the single “Quem Me Dera” received around 27 million views on YouTube and the single achieved the Platinum mark. The album, which has already reached the Platinum award, was considered the best European album of the year by Songlines magazine and was also nominated for the Latin Grammy, having been presented on a world tour with one hundred and a half concerts, covering 200 thousand kilometers, which ended in a sold out Altice Arena. During this period, Mariza received the Luso-Spanish Prize for Art and Culture and was named Master of Mediterranean Music by the Berklee College of Music. 

This year, the twentieth of her career, Mariza returns to her roots and demonstrates the strength of her personality and talent on the album Mariza Canta Amália. Once again produced by Jaques Morelenbaum, the new work brings Mariza in full possession of all her interpretive talents, passing with praise and distinction the exam that is to dedicate an entire disc to Amália's repertoire, imposing her own reading and interpretation.  

In the last twenty years, Mariza has long gone beyond the phase in which she could constitute just a mere exotic episode in the World Music scene, capable of being replaced by any new colorful phenomenon that appears in another geographic corner of the record industry market. She has already proven to be a great international artist, of strong originality and enormous talent, from whom much can be expected in the future. The girl from Mozambique, raised in the popular Mouraria neighborhood of Lisbon, appropriated the roots of her musical culture and became a universal artist capable of opening herself to the world without losing her intense awareness of her Portuguese identity. And the Portuguese public is the first to recognize his triumph and to repay him with boundless love and gratitude.