SONGLINES FADO SERIES

Claudia Aurora

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Last Show: Friday 29 th September 2017

The Pheasantry (Chelsea)

Claudia Aurora’s second album, 'Mulher Do Norte', translates from Portuguese as Woman of the North. Written with a clarity that only distance can allow, it is a homage to the city, the surrounds, the way of living, that helped make her the woman she is. To all that she left behind. It was in 2003 that Claudia swapped her beloved Porto for Bristol. Little did she know that what she began singing in the kitchen as an antidote to homesickness that it would take her to some of the biggest stages in the world. She sang traditional Portuguese folk songs once sung by her grandmother, and in time she wrote her own - impassioned songs of loss, love and longing. In short, songs of saudade, the emotion at the very core of fado, perhaps best translated as ‘the love that remains after something is gone’ - a lover, a comrade, a place.

“Haunting Portuguese fado... heartbreakingly poignant”

Time Out

“People don’t understand what I’m singing,” says Claudia, “so I try to make them feel what I want them to feel. Onstage, my heart is in my mouth, and I think maybe people will see it beating.”

If people didn’t see Claudia’s heart, they certainly heard it. With her first album only a few months old, she was a relative unknown before she played the BBC Radio 3 stage at WOMAD in 2012, yet the reaction to her set ensured Silencio’s sales were seventh highest of the entire festival. Impressed, Radio 3 later broadcast Claudia performing live from the Royal Festival Hall. Further broadcasts followed.

Claudia has since made London her base, gone on to play shows in countries as far-flung as Poland and South Korea, completed the UK’s biggest tour ever undertaken by a fado singer, and been awarded a residency at Green Note, Time Out’s London Venue of the Year 2015.

When it came to recording her latest album, Claudia took her team of crack musicians back to the mother country, and the tranquility of Alentejo. Guitars, double bass, cello, bouzouki, accordion, all combining to create fado as it has never been heard before. Fado with arms open wide, embracing those other grand old traditions of the Iberian Peninsula: flamenco, tango, gypsy.

Supported by The Portuguese Embassy in the UK