Professor, Pianist and Singer-songwriter

www.palui.pt

BIOGRAPHY

Helena Caspurro, born in Porto, where she lives, is an Auxiliar Professor at the Department of Communication and Art (DeCA) at the University of Aveiro (UA), an integrated researcher at the INET-md and a collaborating at the CESEM (Nova de Lisboa), university where she also taught. Pianist, singer-songwriter, in a jazz and fusion genre, she has edited three original CDs, Mulher Avestruz (2003), Colapsopira (2009) and Paluí (2013), the last of which constitutes the musical genesis of artistic research projects that she develops in an educational context and in the Portuguese community, in co-authorship with Pedro Carvalho de Almeida, designer and teacher at DeCA. Of the numerous participants, there are students and teachers of music and design from the UA, more than six hundred children from the elementary schools of Santa Maria da Feira and their teachers, as well as, achieving social and inclusive objectives, such as combating the stigma of mental illness, users and patients of the Psychiatric Hospital Magalhães Lemos (Porto), students and teachers of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, the Art and Quality Childhood Center of Aveiro and artists from Casa da Música. From these projects, several works and initiatives were germinated and presented in the country, all resulted from artistic, transdisciplinary, collaborative and co-creation processes, such as: the edition of the book Paluí: Viagem sonoras que a Língua Portuguesa conta (2017), videos, workshops, exhibitions, sound and interactive artifacts, music and theater performances, and, finally, the musical and transdisciplinary concert, Paluí, está aqui? Histórias sonoras para cantos interiores, presented at the festival Ao Alcance de Todos, at Casa da Música (2019) – edited in Documentary and Film-Concert (2020). At the invitation of the Educational Service of this last institution, she was artistic and pedagogical director of musical and scenic concerts that she created and presented in both of its concert halls (2011; 2013), and, at the invitation of the APEM, she composed Coculi (2018) for the Cantar Mais website. She works regularly with the percussionist Brendan Hemsworth in the production of her musical work. Paulo Neto, António Miguel, Filipe Lopes are musicians with whom she collaborates in the creation and coordination of the various transdisciplinary and artistic projects she directed, together with José Geraldo (actor), Patrícia Costa (costume designer), António Valente (filmmaker), Marcelo Baptista (image projection), António Oliveira (staging), Carlos Silva (videoart), Miguel Almeida and João Neto (video design). She recorded and shared artistic activity with several musicians, such as Elizabeth Davis, Arnaldo Fonseca, António Aguiar, Carlos Mendes, Pedro Lima Pereira, Andrés Tarabbia (Pancho), Mário Santos, Pedro Almeida, Nuno Aragão, António Miguel (Tomi), Diana Basto, among many others. The improvisation in musical learning, to which she dedicated her doctoral dissertation (2006), is one of the objects of choice in guiding the subjects that she teaches and develops as educator and musician. Her musical and artistic activities also include: participation in radio programs and soundtracks of one Portuguese soap; the presentation as a guest performer at Tedx-Aveiro (2013) and, as a singer, in concerts in Portugal with the Filarmonia das Beiras orchestra; editing several video clips, in collaboration with other authors and the Cine Clube de Avanca, some of which were selected at numerous international film festivals, such as Navegar, which was nominated in 2014 at the International Children’s Film Festival in Lucknow (India). She hopes to publish his new musical work and CD, Massaiá, in 2023.