JOÃO BALÃO

I started playing guitar at 9 years old, piano at 17, the electric bass at 20, and percussion at 26.

 

And kept playing simultaneously  all those instruments, although it was as a percussionist I reached my musical maturity. 
I explain multi-instrumentalism as an organic need to produce music and looking at music from different viewpoints in order to have a global vision as broad as possible.

​

 I studied at the Academia de Amadores de Música in Lisbon, and at the School of Jazz of the Hot Club of Portugal. Nevertheless my most important school was mostly playing all genres I could, with all the musicians I could. 

So, for over 40 years, I played traditional Portuguese music, Flamenco, Brazilian, Moroccan, Angolan, Capeverdean, Mozambican, Balkan, rock, jazz, pop, contemporary, and fado. During that long road I collaborated with names like Dulce Pontes, Fausto Bordalo Dias, João Afonso, Ivan Lins, Max Roach, Chico César, Jordi Bonell, Dafnis Prieto, Carmen Linares, Vasco Hernandez,  Sara Tavares, Paulo de Carvalho,and groups like Kyrie, El Cholo, Los Elefantes, Triando, La Rumbé, Bazaar, Orkestina, and Ala dos Namorados, among many others. I also worked for 10 years as a composer and music producer for advertising and creating soundtracks for documentaries and short films, theater and contemporary dance. 

In 1998, Portugal Sony music hired me to give body to the project Cantigas de Amigos, in which I was in charge of the arrangements and production of traditional Portuguese songs and music director of 41 people, including many Portuguese sounding names like Luis Represas and Maria João. Then, moving to live in Barcelona, I ​​co-produced with Mariano Martos (flamenco bassist for Duquende, Miguel Poveda and José Manuel Cañizares) and Valentí Adell, Martos’ disc, "Un Compás Antes Que Suene El Despertador". With this record, Martos introduced me to the high standards of flamenco percussion.

As a result, I spent the following years getting into the very demanding flamenco environment in Barcelona, playing with many flamenco musicians, singers and dancers, getting deep into the roots of flamenco, but also playing with groups like Triando, who are trying to modernise flamenco and blend it with jazz.

​

I played at the Forum of Cultures 2004, with the original project Triangulo do Mar, on the 30th anniversary of TV3, and in many other Spanish festivals. I performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London with the group of the Argentinean Axel Krieger, opening for Macaco, and with the same group I returned to London to open for Gotham Project at the Barbican Center.

​

In 2011, I recorded the album (quadruple platinum in Poland) "Sobremesa" by Anna Maria Jopek, with whom I later went on tour, and introduced me to the Polish audience. Later I went back to Poland several times as a solo artist to make concerts (Warsaw, Kraków, concert for Polish Public Radio in Rzeszów, and a special invitation from the city of Lublin for the Night of Culture, one of the most important events in the region) and to give original workshops about rhythms (Warsaw, Kraków and Lublin)
Throughout the years of activity I collaborated in about 50 albums, and played in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Greece, Cape Verde, Brazil, Macao, Argentina, Guinea-Bissau, Poland and England
I also produced or co-produced 10 albums. Lately, I’ve been working mostly as a composer for theatre plays, closely collaborating with the company Teatro Livre.