Ligia França to talk about herself and tell her story, she prefers to do it through the music she lived and lives in her northeastern Brazil and Italy, in the beautiful region of Venice, where she has lived for many years.
At only 12 years old, she was already performing live in Natal with the group Pó da Terra, specializing in original regional music, with strong political connotations. It was the 1970s, and Brazil was experiencing the hardest period of military dictatorship. Soon after, he affirms himself as a young soloist of the Band Mechanism, playing in the bars and tents of the coast of Natal with a repertoire of Brazilian Popular Music (MPB), but being very interested in the sophisticated sound of bossa nova, more intimate, to express it. In this context, in the early 90's, attracts the attention of an Italian businessman offers him a contract for a season in Milan in 1994.
When back to Italy, in 1998, he made his first album, VIDA, in Turin, with countryman Roberto Taufic, guitarist, composer, arranger and producer, focusing on an unpublished repertoire of great famous composers in Natal. The project is so audacious that it can only be published in 2006 through a charity campaign backed by Italian Porsche for the construction in Natal of a support structure that welcomes families of sick children in therapy in the capital. The concerts and the sale of the thousand copies of this record, decidedly, donate VIDA (LIFE).
"MUNDO MELHOR" is the second album and to produce it, Ligia brings especially the important musician and arranger, Joca Costa. We are in 2005 and besides the song of Pixinguinha that gives the name to the disc, the repertoire is chosen among the songs of the great composers of the MPB: Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Milton Nascimento and Caetano Veloso, and some new compositions of Brazilian musicians Italy. It is an album that also counts on the participation of great Italian musicians, like the guitarists Sandro Gibellini and Ennio Righetti, and that stands out by the orchestration realized by Joca Costa. This work enters the record market in 2008.
A few years go by and in 2010 comes the moment of "MEU MUNDO É HOJE", project with the production and the guitar of Roberto Taufic, no doubt a sort of soul mate, artistically speaking. Ligia's will here was to unite her Brazilian roots and a repertoire from the 30's of the twentieth century to jazz sounds. The Cuban pianist Aruan Ortiz landed in Venice from New York and Armando Marçal did the same, arriving from Rio with his percussive mastery, to materialize this idea. The result was a great success of public and critic, for the disc that for the successive tournée that was extended by Europe. The first and only tribute to the Italian songwriting on this album - Guarda che luna, by Fred Buscaglione - was highly appreciated and earned appearances in Italian and European collections.
Already with a faithful audience waiting for her releases to meet songs rarely recorded in Europe, this time Ligia França goes to Brazil because in her fourth album, CONTRASSENSO, she wants to record the original rhythms and instruments of her country. In September 2015, in Natal, Roberto and his brother, the pianist Eduardo Taufic, receive it to arrange and produce a cd of sambas and classics of Brazilian music. Again, the focus period is the 30's where the sensitivity of Noel Rosa, Herivelto Martins and Dorival Caymmi, among others, find in the interpreter's heart fertile ground for all the nuances of his voice. This record is published in the Italian winter of 2016.
In 2021 come remastered Meu Mundo é Hoje with a brand new face and label.
This is the most recent work (2023) after the forced break suffered by the musicians in recent years, returns with doubled energy and offers us EspontâneaMENTE a live studio, acoustic and intimate, tailored to its unmistakable interpretative nuances.
This is a timeless project, both for the good taste and the classical nature of the repertoire, and for the poetics and guitar virtuosity of his lifelong friend, the countryman and now international Roberto Taufic. Together with Roberto Rossi's drums - the most Brazilian Bolognese musician there is - this close-knit trio will take us on a particular journey through the seas, the notes and verses of greats such as Vinícius de Moraes, Caetano Veloso, Domenico Modugno, Milton Nascimento, Charles Chaplin and Villa-Lobos, just to mention the best known. To embark without thinking twice!
You can click on the titles of the records or on the covers on the official page www.ligiafranca.com to listen, buy and learn more about Ligia França's records.
