From sacred polyphony to Luso-Afro-Brazilian song, a musical journey through centuries of encounters, exchanges, and transformations across oceans and cultures.
Atlantic Crossings explores centuries of musical encounters between Portugal, Africa, Brazil, and the Atlantic islands. Through sacred, secular, and popular traditions, the program traces how music travelled across oceans, transformed through migration, empire, slavery, and cultural exchange, and connected distant communities. From Renaissance polyphony to Luso-Afro-Brazilian musical exchanges and Azorean modernism, the concert invites audiences to hear the Atlantic as a vibrant space of musical mobility, encounter, transformation, and reinvention.
This event, coordinated by Prof. Thomas Almeida, is an extension of her seminar “Lusophone Music and Culture”, at the UML, and is sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
With:
Inês Thomas Almeida, Professor of Musicology at INET-md/Nova University of Lisbon, commentary & mezzo-soprano
João Vaz, Professor of Organ at the Lisbon School of Music, Polytechnic University of Lisbon, organ & harpsichord
UMass Lowell Chamber Singers - Director: Jonathan Richter
Free and open to the public!