Chico Buarque (BR)

One of the original masters of Brazilian MPB, the legendary Chico Buarque is preparing to tour with an orchestra for a live performance of his seminal 1971 album“Construção. Voted as one of the most influential Brazilian albums of all time, Chico has never performed this music in its entirety before with the extraordinary original arrangements, which included contributions from Rogerio Duprat, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Toquinho, and Vinicius de Moraes.

The album is known for its implicit criticism of ruling Brazil’s military dictatorship at the time. It was greeted by the regime’s opponents as an important cultural and socio-political statement, released as it was during the dictatorship’s most repressive period. However because Buarque couched his criticism in such melodic beauty and lyrical obliqueness, and because of its popularity, the regime—surprisingly—neither banned nor censored Construção

The tour is scheduled for October 2021 which marks precisely 50 years since its release and has,  perhaps, never been so pertinent given the current turbulent political situation in Brazil.