TALK | Comunidade Bacteriana
May 16 2025, 18h00
With Simão Costa e Neco Novellas
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12 r/c, 1170-112 Lisboa
3rd floor (access by stairs)
Talk in Portuguese
Free Entry
These bacteria play important roles in our bodies, such as antibacterial/protective, immunomodulatory, nutritional and metabolic.
They have been in the digestive tracts of other organisms, particularly mammals, for many thousands of years.
A collaboration between musicians Anselmo João Johanhane A.K.A Neco Novellas and Simão Costa reflects a relationship with ancestry that is not exclusive to our human ancestors, but even broader. It celebrates everything that happened before our time as an intricate multitemporal and multispatial interweaving without borders, as if it were an acultural broth.
Two musicians with a background in classical music (lyrical singing, guitar and piano) and an artistic career marked by creativity and experimentation, rehearse and question notions of erudition, tradition, high and low cultures that may be detached from the Western paradigm.
This music is presented in concert, as if it were an ancestral ritual.
It navigates SOUND as if there were no borders, as if all the bacteria that make us sick could potentially be symbiotic and vice versa.
In this way, lyrical singing is dressed up as the “traditional”, the piano is transformed into a gamelan and the guitar can sound like a sitar.
As a wish and evocation, he is looking for music that would be comfortable both at a world music festival and in an opera house.
Simão Costa is a musician, pianist and composer. With a solid classical background, he has been working as a pianist and composer since 2003, exploring the relationship between music and digital technologies, as well as the relationship between these and other disciplinary areas.
He conceives and designs his own music creation software with Max/Msp/Jitter. She has an intense pedagogical activity, designing artistic education projects in collaboration with various educational services (Gulbenkian, CCB Fábrica das Artes, among others). She has received several creative commissions and has participated in artistic residency programs such as VICC in Sweden, Sítio das Artes at Gulbenkian, Rede de Residências DG Artes/Ciência Viva, among others.
His work was awarded in Bourges by the IMEB in the category of music for dance with the music for “Subterrâneos do Corpo” by Ana Martins. He has presented his work in Portugal, Spain, France, Poland and Holland. He is artistic director of the MãoSimMão Cultural Association.
He currently lives and works in Lisbon as an independent musician and composer.
Anselmo João Johanhane (Neco) was born and raised in Maputo-Mozambique in a musical family where his father João Jotamo Johanhane sang, played guitar and electric organ and his mother Gertrudes Sofia Vilanculos sang at traditional ceremonies and in the choir of the local Catholic Church.
Later they came into contact not only with the music of other African tribes, but also with Western music, as a result of their musical activities in and for the Catholic Church, where they learned and played during ceremonies. All the influences lead to a style that the brothers describe as “NOVELLAS MUSIC FOR THE WORLD” where the rhythms, melodies and harmonies you hear are related to jazz, classical music, authentic music and compositions of various styles.
After a successful start in Mozambique, where Neco is a celebrity in his own right, he obtained a scholarship to study classical vocal music and guitar at the Academia de Música Eborense and later at the Universidade de Música de Évora in Portugal.
Although Neco’s heart was already set on improvisation music and singing, he studied classical music in Portugal for five years. It turned out that classical music became an important asset to his musical development “… Neco is not far from bringing his own classical or jazz repertoire.”