“LOOPING SOLO” is a concert where Manuel de Oliveira adapts works of his own creation and a version of the song Venham Mais Cinco by José Afonso to a solo concert format.

Manuel de Oliveira, with a guitar, a braguesa and some percussion instruments, sublimely transports us to his unique musical universe.

Using a technology that allows him to record a series of sounds in real time, it is in a virtuoso and novel way that the musician immerses us in a profound journey that erases the concept of time.

“Long before the theatres’ audiences are filled up with spectators, there is, strange as it may seem, those who dialogue with the silence that exists in these apparently empty spaces. Imagining the arrival of the sound of the footsteps, the moving towards the chairs and the murmuring embraced by the surprise of the arrival, they greet the silence, initiating a ritual that pacifies the longing that falls on him. Manuel de Oliveira places himself in the first wing: the place between what it is heard and what it is to be heard. Dialoguing with the silence, it assures him understanding and companionship along the moving of the blast. Between the silence and the spectator, between the spectator and the sound, standing at the edge of the aphonia of the spaces, this composer embraces his instrument as a voice and invites us to witness his dialogue with the silence without saying a word. 

We might even say if the silence was wild, which sometimes is, that Manuel is a silence enchanter and that our internal roaring is seduced and pacified by his solo intercourse.”

Márcio Silva