Saudade, Colour of Love

Maria Mendes is a Portuguese jazz singer that has developed her career in The Netherlands for the last 15 years. And if leaving her country was not only part of her music education plan but also a conscious decision for someone who was seeking a place among the competitive European jazz scene, recently Maria Mendes felt she could no longer resist the growing appeal of including fado in her repertoire. She first did so while recording Close to Me, a symphonic approach to fado fine-tuned with American pianist and arranger John Beasley, and with the prestigious Metropole Orkest on board.

Shortening the emotional distance to her home country through music proved to be a strong artistic move as well when Maria Mendes got nominated for a Grammy. So she decided to dig deeper and, once again, joined forces with Beasley and the Metropole in a live recording at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, adding some new tunes to the setlist. One of the new additions is the opening ‘Com que Voz’, a fado once sung by Amália Rodrigues, which exemplifies how the singer’s crystalline voice follows in the footsteps of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra’s elegant orchestral approach, but still finds room for a more adventurous improvisation in the middle of the tune. Maria Mendes navigates these tasteful nine tracks confidently. And here and there she does reach some rewarding and surprising peaks in her music. If only there could more of these.