Al’Fado is the new musical project that mixes Sephardic roots with the Portuguese song par excellence, Fado. The themes are sung in Portuguese, Hebrew and Ladino – a medieval dialect of Spanish origin.
Based in Lisbon, the Al’Fado ensemble assumes musical influences ranging from Flamenco to Jazz, including World Music, as a result of the cultural diversity of the Portuguese and Israeli musicians who are part of it: Gal Tamir (voice and clarinet), Avishay Back ( bass), João Roque (guitar) and Diogo Melo de Carvalho (percussions and melodic).
The ensemble has performed live in such diverse and emblematic places as the Belém Cultural Center, the Shaaré Tikva Synagogue, and the Lisbon Roman Theater Museum, having also toured Europe and Israel, passing through Basel, Cordoba and Tel Aviv, the ensemble was also selected to perform at the prestigious International Showcase Festival for World Music and Jazz, in Jerusalem.
Al’Fado is the new musical project that mixes Sephardic roots with the debut album, Nasimiento, which is presented as a double single, with the Sephardic song ‘Rikordus di mi Nona‘ and the Fado ‘Ó Gente da Minha Terra’. It should be noted that Nasimiento has the special participation of the Portuguese pianist João-Paulo Esteves da Silva and the Israeli flutist Hadar Noiberg.
‘Rikordus di mi Nona’ was originally composed by Flory Jagoda, a legend of Sephardic culture. A survivor of the two world wars and later emigrated to the United States, she would eventually obtain well-deserved recognition on a world scale. The interpretation of Al’Fado offers the rich Sephardic culture a true bridge between the generations.
Like the Portuguese people, the Jewish/Israeli people carry a history full of pain and loss, where the emotions of sadness, melancholy and longing are immortalized in memory. This similarity between the two cultures inspired Al’Fado in the interpretation of the Fado ‘Ó Gente da Minha Terra‘. The arrangement counts on the participation of the Israeli flautist Hadar Noiberg, whose result turned out to be charming.
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