Originally from Italy, Spain and Germany, we all meet in Lisbon and create the trio Faya. This word evokes fire, which is heat, strength. In Portuguese it is a tree, symbolising root and nature. The beech means also fairy in the Ligurian tradition, in Italy. In this meeting of voices, strings and wind, we discover the feminine and the pleasure of mixing their own musical influences. Our concerts are journeys through different universes, inspired by traditional styles, such as Venezuelan polo, Indian carnatic music or Peruvian Landó.
September 2019 we were honoredas the WINNER OF THE CREOLE WORLD MUSIC AWARD in Berlin, receiving this nice critic of the jury: “This band showed a varied playing style, high musicality, original instrumentation, beautiful communication with the audience, lively performance and great joy in playing.”
Since September ’22 the Band is collaborating with the Booking Agency Hauptmann Entertainment (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) https://www.hauptmannentertainment.com/
NEWS
NEXT CONCERTS:
16th/03/ 23: Kulturkirche– Cologne (Germany)
18/03/23: Schloss Landestrost (Germany)
MEDIA
MEDIA
Live @ Os Penicheiros- Video by Carla Mota e Cláudio Alves
Live @Os Penicheiros- Video by Carla Mota e Cláudio Alves
German Tour Faya and Collective Mosaico, August 2022
The three of us are members of the collective Mosaico (https://mosaicollective.com/). Our research is based on sustainability topics, and a poetical, interdisciplinary approach to performing for a multi-generational audience. Faya plays 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.
Trailer by Helena Gonçalves
THE TEAM
Elena La Conte, Kristina van de Sand, Mili Vizcaíno: Music
Elide Gramegna: Visuals on the Overheadprojector
SUM-BÁ: THE FAYA CUSHION CONCERT
A musical manifestation for a multigenerational audience (from 0 to 99 years old).
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.
Duration may vary from 30 to 50 minutes.
ABOUT US
ABOUT US
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) was born in Mönchengladbach (Germany). She studied Applied Cultural Sciences at the University of Hildesheim, Jazz Violin at the HMTM Hannover and the ESMAE in Porto and Elementary Music Education with Jule Greiner (UdK Berlin). Before and during her studies, she traveled to Ecuador, Peru and Brazil and has since become passionate about South American folklore. With the string quartet Quartett PLUS 1 she realized interdisciplinary concert formats for Herbstgold Festival, Sanssouci Musikfestspiele, Kölner Philharmonie and Konzerthaus Berlin and worked in several theatre productions as a stage musician. She has been living in Lisbon since 2017 where she also performs with the world music ensembles FAYA, winner of the Berlin Creole global contest in 2019. Kristina, together with Elena La Conte and Elide Gramegna, founded in 2018 the collective Mosaico.based on sustainability topics, and a poetical, interdisciplinary approach they create the concert O Canto da Baleia and in 2022 started a new creation about the Bees: Bzzz.
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.
