Liana
There are 2 artists with this name:
1. A Canadian Singer-Songwriter
2. A singer of fado music from Portugal
1. Canadian: LiANA (photo with Sylvia Tyson)
Toronto-based Singer-Songwriter-Producer-Advocate-Minister-Chaplain.
No doubt one of the best multi-taskers around.
2008 Toronto Exclusive Magazine Award Nominee
2009 Artist of the Month (review interview by GAY GUITARISTs’ Robert Urban)
Past nominations: BCCMA, JUNOS, OCFF
MultiI -instrumentalist: vox, violin, guitar, viola, percussion, keys, midis, etc.
Genre-bender and multi-linguist (Italian, French, English and basic others).
Influences: classical genre, blues, folk, rock
Favorite artists: Rita MacNeil, Kd lang, Melissa Ethridge, Elvis,Supertramp, Cyndi Lauper
Education: Post Graduate
2. Portugese Liana
For a growing number of admirers, Liana is already one of the most original fado singers of the new generation. A rare pearl to discover, and a talent with a brilliant future. Liana exhibits an impressive range of vocal registers, with diversified tones, and from the almost whisper to the extension of the voice to the skies, sweet and strong. Also singular, on the present fado scene, is her clear diction, without disturbing imperfections, and a word articulation that emphasises the beauty of the Portuguese idiom and makes the poem breathe and free itself, like back in time the best fado singers would require of themselves. But a good voice, without feeling or art to command it, might just be an easy and sterile acrobatics that only attracts the less caring.
Beside the vocal capacities, Liana possesses a unique interpretative sensibility. If we assist a concert or hear her few published works, it is the emotion of the beautiful and of a shared sentiment that crushes us.
In fados where the poem excels, it is more visible her exceptional interpretation. She unites multiple ornaments and voice amplitudes, she says the various words and phrases with a specific feeling and inflection. In short, she subtly creates a music as if dramatised.
A natural legacy sensibility, undoubtedly, but also the result of a long learning, and, furthermore, the consequence of complete surrender, of intelligence, of good taste and style, of major art.
The remarkable curriculum of Liana proves a hard and constant apprenticeship, accomplished mainly in the great school of traditional and popular fado, singing regularly to diverse audiences since the age of 9, with dedication and intense passion, that culminated with the two first prizes in the most important fado contest “Grande Noite do Fado”.
Also the artistic experience obtained by the five years in the musical “Amália”, an unforgettable role that made Liana known to the larger public, however that wasn’t her real kind of singing.
The open mind towards innovation, the courage and the enthusiasm, with an attitude of liberty and independence, have been revealed on Liana´s course, inherent to her character traits and way of being.
In 2004 she releases her debut album, diverging from the forms of fado she was raised in, as a wish of emancipation and by editor’s choice. Tiago Machado was the producer and mentor of the project giving it all the electronic view, while Liana gave it the more fado style side and the choice of the poems.
As an experimental work, it pioneered the introduction of different sonorities that collide with a immaculate idea of fado. With unequal results, it presents, nevertheless, some excellent numbers, from which we point out the fabulous version of the emblematic “Estrela da Tarde” - Afternoon Star.
Soon after, as a counterpoint with the previous attitude, Liana returns to the unpretentious simplicity of fado and to herself, after several years of break in the musical, interpreting another part. She releases in 2005 the cd “Sombra” - Shadow in an author’s edition, with classic fados that her chant reinvents and personalises, and to which she confers new life. The cd is also a testimony to the authenticity of the sessions in the “fado house” (a place for tourists and locals to have dinner while listening to fado), where Liana then started to sing and where she remained for two years.
Another example of open mind spirit, is Liana´s ingress in the band Stockholm Lisboa Project, although not renouncing to her solo career. The cd “Sol” - Sun (the same word and meaning in Swedish and Portuguese) is released in 2007 making the fusion between traditional music of Portugal and Sweden, an apparently impossible utopia, that it’s to be noticed as a work of pure world music, surprising, crystalline and full of energy.
A fundamental component of her career has been the concerts, some in Portugal, but mainly abroad. Anyone who has seen her live, knows that it’s on stage that Liana most shines and best shares her art.
Dressed with elegance and plainness, without stereotyped gestures, Liana´s chant in concert is essentially veracity and surrender, on a balanced fado that flies in a thousand feelings and creative modulations.
Liana´s versatility allows her to interpret different genres of fado, and to design innovative and diverse concerts, with a thematic fitted to please comprehensive types of audiences.
Beyond the chant, her power of communication is another precious treasure, combining an uncommon gift of the gab and a firm empathy with the audience.
Eternally not conformed with her country, accordingly to the Portuguese blood that runs and wounds her veins, Liana, who deeply loves Portugal, departs to London in the beginning of 2007, while progressing on her studies.
Liana´s next solo disc, project that has been conceived by her from the roots, will have some compositions and poems of her own creation, as well as invited writers and composers, on a meticulous work that absorbs her with enthusiasm and love.
To Liana, a passionate for the word and the mysteries of the Portuguese soul, Fado continues to fulfil her life, as since the age of nine.
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