Vocalist, songwriter, and sound artist Catarina dos Santos is an accomplished artist, with an international career, and expansive mindset. Her cultural roots combine Africa, Portugal and Brazil, and her life in New York as an artist became the driving force for her artistry as a musician and composer. Lisbon is the city where she starts her career as a Jazz singer. She studied Jazz Performance at The City College of New York, and Orchestration at The Juilliard School, was a member of the Juilliard School Choral Union. From 2005 to 2008 she is the lead singer for the band Nation Beat, which brought her to work on a fusion of North Eastern Brazilian Maracatu and New Orleans Second Line. She records „Maracatuniversal” (Recife, 2006) and tours NE Brazil and the U.S., playing at renowned venues such as The Blue Note, Joes Pub, The Stone (John Zorn), Sob’s, etc. Catarina works with greats from the Latin Jazz scene, such as Montego Joe, the flutist/pianist Oriente Lopez (Irakere), John Benitez, and Annette Aguilar. New York’s multicultural landscape serves as fertile ground for her writing and inspires her singing. She created a new sound that has its first outcome in her first album, No Balanço do Mar (2009) at Pregones Theatre (Bronx): a music created from Catarina’s experience as a musician in New York, mainly in the Latin Jazz and Brazilian music scene, infused with her cultural background of Portuguese and African music. She composes and co-produces the show The Mermaid’s Feet, with Raquel Z. Rivera, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Catarina’s research also takes her to be an invited lecturer at ASWAD Conference, at Rutgers University (Pittsburgh, 2011).
In 2013 Catarina is soloist and ensemble member for Mary Lou Williams’ „Mass For Peace” (musical direction – Deanna Witkowski). In 2014 she travels to New Orleans to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as lead singer of the Brazilian band Forroteria.
She completed a Masters Degree in Composition at Goldsmiths University, in London. Composition credits while in London: The Power Behind the Crone (February 2017), a theatre piece performed by Alison Skilbeck and directed by Tim Hardy, sound design and composition in collaboration with Matt Kirk for Untitled, a choreography by Gianna Burright, that premiered at Resolutions Festival, London (2017); composed the music for I am Orestes and I am Elektra Too, by To Be Creatives (premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival). In 2018 he creates and co-produces with Marcy DePina, Spirits of Resistance – Women, Music and the Drum, an exchange project between female composers/percussionists at the Bronx Music and Heritage Center in New York. In 2019 she plays at the Stowe Jazz Festival with the quintet Catarina dos Santos/Ebinho Cardoso, alongside greats such as Chico Pinheiro, Anthony Wilson, Ben Allison. Sound installations/live performance: Da Margem, a sound art piece with live improvisation, commissioned for the Autumn Art exhibition “Margem”, in AMAC (Barreiro), and Parallel Cycles, composition for videoart/performance, in collaboration with Elizabetta Antonucci and Ana Paxeco (commissioned by Sluice Magazine, London, UK).
Catarina is the creator of three creative worlds that go hand-in-hand: an original music project in her own name, with a more acoustic sound and a direct connection with Angolan, Cape Verdean, Portuguese and Brazilian music; Mad Nomad, her Jazz/Electronica project, Jazz and Spoken Word; and the Brazilian Jazz trio, that released its debut album, “Mais Cores”, in 2020. Mad Nomad releases their first album, Untamed, in 2020, and a homonymous book in 2021. Mad Nomad’s second album, Common Ground, is out in 2026. Catarina currently teaches Jazz Vocals and Jazz History at the Escola Artística de Música do Conservatório Nacional, in Lisbon.
Catarina dos Santos | Singer and Composer 