FAYA

We did it! Yesterday, on the occasion of the 25th of November – International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we launched our first Release – SEU GRITO

It is a choral and feminine piece addressing the themes of gender violence and femicide, a tribute to the Afro-Brazilian cultural roots, composed by Aurinha do Coco.

We share a beautiful collaboration in this version of Seu GRITO, featuring the percussion and the powerful voice of @jabumorales and a lot more of wonderful artists from all over the world:

Jabu Morales voice, xequere, alfaia

Méli Huart: atabaconga

Choir: Neya Castro, Margherita Lavosi, Cristina Clara, Marta Freitas, Héléna Fontaine, Elena Policki, Lala Tamar

Spoken Word: Badi Assad, Sara Alhinho, Neya Castro

“Aurinha, rainha do coco, mulher que em tuas veias corriam lembranças dos contos grios e da travessia negra. Vibravam em teus pés as batidas do ilû e do ganzá. Seu grito ecoou para as mulheres de Olinda e também para todas nós, que sofremos o peso do patriarcado e da violência de gênero. Que este canto de denúncia e revolta reverbere pelo mundo, por mais igualdade e sem violência. Salve Aurinha, salve a rainha, salve o samba de coco, e salve a cultura afro-brasileira.” Elena La Conte

Recording and Mixing: Rui Filipe, Studio Barqueiro de Oz, Lisbon

Mastering: Juan García

Production: Faya

Graphic Design: Oficina Fritta/ Julia Geiger, based on fotos by: Guilherme Gouveia.

Lyric Video: Kristina Van de Sand

FAYA – In English, this word evokes fire, heat and power. In Portuguese, the “faia” is the beech tree, and in the Ligurian tradition it stands for a mystical figure, a fairy of the forest. The FAYA trio combines these associations between female energy, earthiness and ephemere magic in their compositions and a fascinating stage show. The three musicians Elena, Mili and Kristina originally come from Italy, Spain and Germany, but met in Lisbon and founded the FAYA trio. Violin, flute, guitar, percussion and three-part vocals – the FAYA trio has found its very own sound. In this meeting of strings, wind instruments and vocals, they discover their joy in merging different world music styles with their own musical influences. Their concerts are journeys through different universes, inspired by traditional styles such as Venezuelan polo, classical Indian music or the Italian tarantella. The audience is taken on a musical journey of discovery – to the obvious delight of all involved. Whether the songs celebrate life, are politically activist or longingly trace an old love, the basic tone of the trio always remains hopeful. Because FAYA makes music that aims to connect people and to make them curious about the world with its wonderful diversity

In September 2019, FAYA were honored as WINNER OF THE CREOLE WORLD MUSIC AWARD in Berlin: “This band showed a varied playing style, high musicality, original instrumentation, beautiful communication with the audience, lively performance and great joy of playing.”

Since September ’22 the Band is collaborating with the Booking Agency Hauptmann Entertainment (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)

https://www.hauptmannentertainment.com/

NEWS

NEXT CONCERTS:

2025

22/4 Radio Antena 2 (PT) | 19h00

23/4 B.O.T.A., Lisbon (PT) | 21h00

25/4 CAPE Ettelbrück (LUX) | 19h00

more to come! Please join our Newsletter for updates:

MEDIA

FAYA’s first steps, in collaboration with CHIARA PELLEGRINI

PRESS REVIEWS

“Elegant sounds alternate with wild percussion, oriental influences merge with French chanson – pure joie de vivre!“

Göttinger Tageblatt (Göttinger Kultursommer)

“…a musical program that is hard to beat in terms of variety. Wonderful! Relaxed in the here and now, a great afternoon comes to an end after the audience has thanked us long and hard. Once again, Europe has shown itself from its most beautiful side. If only there were more such opportunities like this.”

Kulturmagazin O-Ton (Niederrhein Musikfestival)

PROGRAMS

Music for Young Audiences

The three musicians Elena, Mili and Kristina are also pedagogues and work in other music education projects for children from the age of 1. Here is a selection of programs for young audiences:

O CANTO DA BALEIA

An Aquatic Audiovisual Adventure for Young Audiences age 2+

The three musicians are members of the collective Mosaico (https://mosaicollective.com/). The collective’s research is based on sustainability topics, and a poetical, interdisciplinary approach to performing for a multi-generational audience. Elena, Mili and Kristina are performers in the audiovisual concert O Canto da Baleia– The Song of the Whale.

With the blue whale, protagonist of our aquatic spectacle, we dive deep into the ocean. We meet the marine inhabitants: fishes, medusae, seaweed and other strange sea creatures. Curious, the whale dives deeper and deeper, until it touches the ocean ground, full of trash – too toxic for the marine animals! The mermaid gets tangled in a lost fishing net and expresses her anger with a furious dance. In search of clean water, the whale appears again on the surface when a big storm is coming up … With three musicians and beautiful visual arts on the overhead projector, we tell this little story about the adventures of a whale. We listen to the wind and the waves and watch the dancing mermaids and singing jellyfish. The water becomes the central artistic material on the overhead projector and the musicians transform into strange shadow beings in the ocean depths. In interactive moments with the young audience we make a “garbage batucada” and experience the sensation of storm. On the musical principle of “Call & Response” we provide song texts and rhythms so that our audience can actively participate in the show.

THE TEAM of O CANTO DA BALEIA

Music, Creation and Performance: Elena La Conte, Kristina van de Sand, Mili Vizcaíno: Music

Visuals on the Overheadprojector: Elide Gramegna

SUM-BÁ: THE FAYA CUSHION CONCERT

A musical manifestation for a multigenerational audience (age 1 +)

In the series Cushion Concerts, the trio FAYA leads its small (and grown-up) audience through a musical program about nature and sustainability, creating an interactive artistic approach to the current issue of climate change. Accompanied by the musicians’ three voices, violin, flute, guitar and many other instruments, babies, children and their relatives immerse in the magical world of music. In the program SUM-BÁ, all sorts of humming, crawling, chirping and flowering creatures cavort, elemental to our world and introduced by FAYA through various musical styles. Like migratory birds, we travel from Latin America to Europe, experiencing the biodiversity of nature through rhythm and movement, exploration of instruments and soundscapes, taking home melodies and rhythms that make our days bloom.

ABOUT US

BANDBIOGRAPHY

The FAYA trio exists since November 2018, with its first concerts in Lisbon clubs and several subsequent tours to Italy and Germany, the musicians’ home countries. In September 2019, the newly formed ensemble achieved a breakthrough as winners of the CREOLE WORLD MUSIC AWARD in Berlin. With the award in their luggage, the trio was able to secure further appearances at major festivals and concert series such as the Göttinger Kultursommer, the Niederrhein Musikfestival (DE), the Outono Quente festival (PT) and the Effetto Venezia festival (IT). However, the situation changed drastically in March 2020. Most of the planned tours were canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. The trio was only able to play a few concerts during this phase, including at the online festival “Worldwide Wo*men in Concert”, in a line-up with renowned artists such as Badi Assad, Loli Molina, La Perla, Surma, as well as newcomer bands from the UNESCO Cities of Music, who supported the project. In November 2021, founding member Chiara Pellegrini had to move to Italy for private and pandemic reasons, which called into question whether the ensemble could continue to exist. A wonderful replacement was found for an already planned tour of Germany in summer 2022: the Spanish composer, singer and guitarist Mili Vizcaíno. The tour also took the trio to the Elbphilharmonie, where the musicians took part in the production “O Canto da Baleia” and met their future agent Christoph Hauptmann at a concert at the Golbekhaus. Since then, the ensemble has been constantly working on their own compositions and the release of a debut EP planned for winter 2024, preceded by a single + video clip release and a release tour in Portugal/Spain and Germany.

MILI VIZCAÍNO JAÉN (vocals, guitar/guitalele, cajón, composition) a native of Spain, began her musical career at the Badajoz Conservatory and studied jazz singing in Évora and Lisbon, with the renowned jazz singer Maria João. She taught western music at the University of Chennai and completed two semesters of music studies in Indian classical music there. Inspired by these influences, she made Carnatic music the subject of her master’s thesis and founded the ensemble AAMA, for which she wrote compositions in a fusion of jazz and Indian music. She has also completed postgraduate studies in music education for children (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) as well as Estill Voice Craft Level I +II (with Helen Rowson and Paul Farrington) and the body alphabet by Zygmunt Molik (Grotowski) with Jorge Parente. She is currently doing a PhD in Musicology at the University of Évora on the topic of music and ecology.

KRISTINA VAN DE SAND (violin, viola, vocals, percussion) was born in Mönchengladbach (Germany). She studied Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Hildesheim, Jazz Violin at the HMTM Hannover and the ESMAE in Porto as well as Elementary Music Pedagogy with Jule Greiner (UdK Berlin). From 2006-2018 she worked as a violinist with QUARTETT PLUS 1, with whom she realized interdisciplinary concert formats for the Herbstgold Festival, the Sanssouci Music Festival, the Kölner Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus Berlin, among others. She has won the Creole Global Music Award four times (2009 with GOJA MARS, 2011 with BYE BYE BRASIL, 2013 with TANGO BASTARDO and 2019 with FAYA) and the Junge Ohren Award with QUARTETT PLUS 1 in 2014. She currently lives in Lisbon, works as a music teacher at the German School of Lisbon and performs with her ensembles FAYA and MOSAICOLLECTIVE , as well as a stage musician at state theaters throughout Europe.

Elena La Conte (vocals, flute, asalato, composition) born in Italy and living in Lisbon since 2017, Elena is a flutist, singer and music pedagogue. Before moving to Portugal, she lived for over 10 years in Paris, where she studied Anthropology of music at the University Vincennes Saint-Denis, Pedagogy of Music at the University Paris 11 and Jazz Studies at the Conservatoire de Villejuif and Montreuil. During this time, she worked as a music teacher in schools and conservatories and spent a year in Berlin to conduct research for her bachelor thesis on the music from the Turkish community in the German capital. Passionate also about Brazilian music, she studied Choro and Brazilian folklore in Paris and Brazil. Since living in Lisbon, she continued her profession as a music teacher in different schools . As a musician, she currently performs with the trio Faya, and the vocal improvisation group Circular (https://www.circularvoices.com) and as part of the project Mosaicollective, which creates music performances for children, such as the audio-visual concert “O canto da Baleia (https://mosaicollective.com). She performs as flutist with the Cristina Clara’s project and with the brazilian singer song writer Cleison Monteiro.