CATARINA DOS SANTOS

"Catarina is a passionate connoisseur of tradition and an enchantingly talented performer. The complete package."
- Robert Waddell, My Latino Voice, NY

Singer, songwriter, and sound artist Catarina dos Santos is an accomplished artist, with an international career, and expansive mindset. Her cultural roots combine Africa, Portugal and Brazil, and her life in New York as an artist became the driving force for her artistry as a musician and composer. Lisbon is the city where she starts her career as a Jazz singer. Her passion for Jazz takes her to New York, in 2003, to study Jazz Performance at The City College of New York, and Orchestration at The Juilliard School. She also is part of the Juilliard School Choral Union. In 2005 Catarina is invited to be the lead singer for the band Nation Beat, that brought her to work on a fusion of North Eastern Brazilian Maracatu and New Orleans Second Line. She records „Maracatuniversal” (Recife, 2006) and tours NE Brazil and the U.S., playing at renowned venues such as The Blue Note, Joes Pub, The Stone (John Zorn), Sob’s, etc. In a city filled with multiple music genres, Catarina works with greats from the Latin Jazz scene, such as Montego Joe, the flutist/pianist Oriente Lopez (Irakere), John Benitez, and Annette Aguilar.

New York’s multicultural landscape serves as fertile ground for her writing and inspires her singing. She created a new sound that has its first outcome in her first album, No Balanço do Mar, released in 2009 at Pregones Theatre (Bronx): a music created from Catarina’s experience as a musician in New York, mainly in the Latin Jazz and Brazilian music scene, infused with her cultural background of Portuguese and African music. While mastering this mix of sounds, she composes and co-produces the show The Mermaid’s Feet, with her long time collaborator Raquel Z. Rivera, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Catarina’s research also takes her to be an invited lecturer at ASWAD Conference, at Rutgers University (Pittsburgh, 2011).

In 2013 Catarina is soloist and ensemble member for the performance of Mary Lou Williams’s „Mass For Peace” (musical direction – Deanna Witkowski), where she shares the stage with New York’s finest jazz singers, such as Leena Conquest. In 2014 she travels to New Orleans to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as lead singer of the Brazilian band Forroteria.

She completed a Masters Degree in Composition at Goldsmiths University, in London. She wrote the music for The Power Behind the Crone (February 2017), a theatre piece performed by Alison Skilbeck and directed by Tim Hardy. She is currently collaborating with British composer Matt Kirk - their credits include sound design and composition for Untitled, a choreography by Gianna Burright, that premiered at Resolutions Festival, London (2017). Composed the music for „I am Orestes and I am Elektra too”, by To Be Creatives (premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival). In 2018 he creates and co-produces with Marcy DePina, “Spirits of Resistance - Women, Music and the Drum”, an exchange project between female composers / percussionists, carried out in March 2018, at the Bronx Music and Heritage Center in New York. In 2019 she plays at the Stowe Jazz Festival with the quintet Catarina dos Santos/Ebinho Cardoso, alongside greats such as Chico Pinheiro, Anthony Wilson, Ben Allison, among others.

Catarina is the creator of three creative worlds that go hand-in-hand: an original music project in her own name, with a more acoustic sound and a direct connection with Angolan, Cape Verdean, Portuguese and Brazilian music; MadNomad, her Jazz/Electronica project, connected to Jazz and Spoken Word; and the Jazz trio Catarina Jow Pitomba, that released their debut album, “Mais Cores”, in March 2020, where her vast experience with Brazilian Jazz gains body and balance. MadNomad releases their first album in September 2020, and a book, "Untamed", in 2021. She is also recently working in collaboration with Luati González (Spain), and Julian Tarragó (Brazil) creating a new sound based on the musical connections between the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil (particularly the rich cultural heritage of the Gaucho traditions in Rio Grande do Sul and Argentina).

Her love for sound exploration is explicit also on her recent project with pianist Tiago Sousa and percussionist Luati González, on her work "Da Margem", a sound art piece with live improvisation, commissioned for the Autumn Art exhibition "Margem", in AMAC (Barreiro), 2020.

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"She is a prime example and exponent of the upsurge in rich, varied musics happening and increasingly emerging from this part of Portugal."
- Andrew Cronshaw, fRoots Magazine, UK

"Eis uma formação com potencial para desbravar um caminho próprio. “Untamed” é um álbum fascinante para quem entende as explorações, as misturas, a multiculturalidade e o respeito pela diferença como energia propulsora para o mundo pular e avançar. Catarina dos Santos mostra porque é uma mente criativa atenta e interventiva, cujo universo artístico importa não perder de vista.”
- António Branco, Jazz.pt, PT

In 2013 Catarina is soloist and ensemble member for the performance of Mary Lou Williams’s „Mass For Peace” (musical direction – Deanna Witkowski), where she shares the stage with New York’s finest jazz singers, such as Leena Conquest. In 2014 she travels to New Orleans to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as lead singer of the Brazilian band Forroteria.

She completed a Masters Degree in Composition at Goldsmiths University, in London. She wrote the music for The Power Behind the Crone (February 2017), a theatre piece performed by Alison Skilbeck and directed by Tim Hardy. She is currently collaborating with British composer Matt Kirk - their credits include sound design and composition for Untitled, a choreography by Gianna Burright, that premiered at Resolutions Festival, London (2017). Composed the music for „I am Orestes and I am Elektra too”, by To Be Creatives (premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival). In 2018 he creates and co-produces with Marcy DePina, “Spirits of Resistance - Women, Music and the Drum”, an exchange project between female composers / percussionists, carried out in March 2018, at the Bronx Music and Heritage Center in New York. In 2019 she plays at the Stowe Jazz Festival with the quintet Catarina dos Santos/Ebinho Cardoso, alongside greats such as Chico Pinheiro, Anthony Wilson, Ben Allison, among others.

Catarina is the creator of three creative worlds that go hand-in-hand: an original music project in her own name, with a more acoustic sound and a direct connection with Angolan, Cape Verdean, Portuguese and Brazilian music; MadNomad, her Jazz/Electronica project, connected to Jazz and Spoken Word; and the Jazz trio Catarina Jow Pitomba, that released their debut album, “Mais Cores”, in March 2020, where her vast experience with Brazilian Jazz gains body and balance. MadNomad releases their first album in September 2020, and a book, "Untamed", in 2021. She is also recently working in collaboration with Luati González (Spain), and Julian Tarragó (Brazil) creating a new sound based on the musical connections between the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil (particularly the rich cultural heritage of the Gaucho traditions in Rio Grande do Sul and Argentina).

Her love for sound exploration is explicit also on her recent project with pianist Tiago Sousa and percussionist Luati González, on her work "Da Margem", a sound art piece with live improvisation, commissioned for the Autumn Art exhibition "Margem", in AMAC (Barreiro), 2020.

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