User:Helena Bliss/Rita Damásio

Rita Damasio was born in Sainte- Adresse, Normandy (France), 12 August 1982, she is a French-born singer-songwriter who was raised between France and Portugal. She also works as a bilingual voice-over artist, and as a voice teacher.

Her nationality is Portuguese, with Jewish and African background. Her parents were both employees of the Portuguese consulate in France and she spent her childhood in the region of Rouen in Normandy, with her parents, her brother, and sister. Her father was an amateur fado singer and she was raised among traditional jam sessions in her family house, singing with him and growing up listening to music all the time. Her musical work mixes Portuguese tradition, French music, alternative rock, world music, and gospel and she sings in her 2 native languages: Portuguese, French.

Career
She started her musical training at the age of 7 when he joined the «Jeune Chœur», from Chorale Maîtrise Saint-Évode de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen. In Portugal, she followed her studies in the classic area with conductor Saraswati and singing teacher Lúcia Lemos, she studied in Hot Club de Portugal, a jazz school in Lisbon, but it was with private classes with Suzana Teixeira, Paula Oliveira, and several other classical and jazz teachers that she learned vocal technique. Creativity begins at the age of 15, with the gothic rock group CARDILIVM, and only in 2015 she pursued writing her own material. From 2000, at a very young age, she started working exclusively on the music industry, as a backing-vocals for various groups in the Portuguese and African music scene, both in the studio and live, with Lúcia Moniz, Refilon (Cape-Verde), Kalaf Ângelo (from Buraka Som Sistema- Portugal / Angola), Manecas Costa (Guinea-Bissau), Costa Neto (Mozambique) Paulo Flores, Tito Paris, the reggae frontman Richie Campbell, Matias Damásio among many others, with the first Portuguese gospel group Shout !, but it was in the internationally acclaimed musical group Madredeus that she had the greatest visibility, between the years 2008 and 2011, as a lead singer.

After the end of this project, she then decides to interrupt her career as a singer and continues to work with her voice, but away from the spotlight,  as a announcer discovering new plasticity of her vocal instrument and different studio techniques. She then starts to write her own songs. She becomes a highly demanded voice for the biggest Portuguese and Angolan brands, recording almost daily and lending her voice to documentaries, advertising, and films. A new professional phase, that allows her to enjoy motherhood in a more peaceful way.

She presented herself many times on the Coliseu dos Recreios, Casa da Música, Centro Cultural de Belém, and on the main stages of the most significant music festivals in Portugal such as FMM Sines, Paredes de Coura Festival, MEO Marés Vivas Festival, Sol da Caparica, among others, and visited almost all islands in Azores and Madeira Island. With the Portuguese group Madredeus she sang in almost all national theaters in her country. Internationally, she toured in Germany with the Angolan cultural committee in several cities during the FIFA World Cup 2006, in Cape-Verde, in France at  Théatre de La Ville in Paris and the Rio Loco de Toulouse Festival, in Spain  Lorca and Madrid in  Teatro Calderón , in Brazil on occasion of the Commemorative Week of Relations between Brazil and Portugal, in Brasília in 2009, and in Poland in the cities of Warsaw and Wroclaw.

Despite the brief Madredeus passage, the unforgettable experience was remarkable and she was more conscious of her path. In the words of the singer, in an interview with a local newspaper: "I always thought that being part of a project with a structure like Madredeus, things would inevitably work out. I was very happy with my participation, but each one has a place in the world, Madredeus place as a singer will always belong to Teresa, and I am just discovering mine. I will never forget what the founder of the group Pedro Ayres told me: "Rita if you don't sing, you are sinning against humanity". "And, well, I suppose I feel I have to continue, for what he said, for what I believe, even if things are more difficult than they should in this business.

In 2017, she released her first solo album, an authorial bilingual album, entitled Peregrina, financed by the GDA Foundation, a production she shares with Jean Massicotte and François Lallonde (Lhasa de Sela, Patrick Watson). The presentation of the disc took place at Casa da Música in a trio format, at same year.

She has a degree in African Studies from Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa and studied pursue a Master in Development Studies with a specialization in Health at ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa.

Other Projects (2019-)
In 2019, she continues to study in the area of ​​pedagogy. Since college, the Third Sector is, in parallel with music, an area of ​​strong interest because of her academic background, so she decides to explore music in community projects. Training with composer and conductor Tim Steiner exploring different ensemble techniques, for instance soundpainting was a turnaround. She also continues to write new songs.

Albums

 * 2017 - Peregrina - Edição de Autor com apoio da Fundação GDA

Collaboration with Madredeus

 * 2008 - Metafonia- Farol ( Gold Record)
 * 2009- A Nova Aurora - Farol
 * 2011 - Castelos na Areia - Farol

Live DVD with Madredeus

 * 2008 - Metafonia- Concerto-Estúdio ao Vivo no Teatro Ibérico

Other Collaborations

 * Paulo Flores - Ex Combatentes (2009)
 * Boss AC featuring Shout - Tu És Mais Forte (2012)
 * Paulo Flores - O País que Nasceu Meu Pai (2013)
 * Tito Paris - Acústico (2015) European Edition
 * Tito Paris - Acústico (2017) African Edition
 * Paulo Flores - Bolo De Aniversário (2016)
 * Alexandre Magnani - "A Gente é Igual" (2020)

Voice-over work
As a bilingual voice-over at ease with accents, she gave her voice to several advertising work for Portugal, Angola, and France: Contra-Informação (humorous political show where she imitated a female voice minister), Candando, L´Oréal, ANA Aeroportos de Portugal, Ok Teleseguros, Braun, Peugeot, Milaneza, Compal, BES, BNP, BNI, Mega Angola, Bluecom + ( INESC TEC) Bem me Quer, Universal Seguros, Baron de Valls, Millennium, Kinda, Welwitschia, Toyota, Visa Card, Amorim Group, Teixeira Duarte, among others and the NGOs APSA, AP-IMIDIWAN.