Jorge Fernando

After so much success as a recording artist, composer, performer, guitar player and producer, after so many sold out halls and song hits in his own country, it was time to present Jorge Fernando and his remarkable melodies to a broader audience. Let the people hang suspended by his harmonies, let the hearts fly to the secret deep cave where pain, sorrow, melancholy and longing for past love lie in every listener, let the sadness of his singing heal the uncomfortable feeling. Fado is there to shelter the heart.

Jorge Fernando was born in a poor neighbourhood of 50's Lisbon, in a family where music was a common language. He sang Fado - the traditional Portuguese song - when he was 4 with his grandfather proudly playing the guitar as amazed listeners gathered around barrels of cheap wine and marvelled to the little boy interpretation of the dramas and cries of older folks. It was fate - some might say. It was sheer talent, may we add.

No wonder legendary Amália Rodrigues recognised in Jorge Fernando a true artist. He was her guitar player for over six years and her last recordings, before death surprised her (yet unpublished works), were produced by Jorge Fernando. "It was may College studies" - he confesses. Today Jorge expresses a musicality where we can recognise a past of Jazz and pop experience alongside a deeply carved personality and originality rooted in the purest sources of traditional Fado tempered with a modern flavour. He claims the liberty to circulate, seek adventure and inspiration outside the rigid borders of Fado and yet capture it's feeling, indefinable, thin and bright as a pure thought. But never getting lost in the way.

For this record Jorge Fernando gathered a true dream team, with long time friends Ricardo Dias (Producer of the record whose credits include Misia and Brigada Victor Jara), Custódio Castelo (one of the most virtuous Portuguese guitar players), a group of the best musicians available and a set of guests first figures on their own right. André Dequech is a well known Brazilian musician with a considerable career in Jazz alongside the best in his country. Cristina Branco is the voice of a new generation that emerges in the Fado scene at the moment. Argentina Santos is one of the last voices of the old/ancient Fado, capable in her 70's to reach inside for an unforgotten pain, long lost love, the drive of fate.

The songs on this album are uncompleted. None of them is finished. Only when a listener tunes his feelings with his lost memories and finds the ease for his Fado through Jorge Fernando's songs is then the song and the cycle completed. That's the magic of Fado. —Courtesy Calabash Music