Miraculous and mysterious, stirring and poetic, attractive and luminous… such is Misia, an exceptional fado singer who, since her first album release under Detour label, Garras Dos Sentidos, then followed by her passage at the Olympiain October 1998 and January 1999 (14th & 15th of January), has imposed herself as an essential figure of the international musical scene.

Born in Porto, Portuguese by her father and Catalan by her mother, Misia chose her stage name in honor of the famous Misia Sert, muse of Mallarmé and friend of Proust and Picasso. Descended from an artists lineage – a grand-mother music-hall dancer, a mother ballet-dancer – she naturally turned towards an artistic career with in her mind this irrepressible desire to sing Fado, this nostalgic and stripped song, so powerfull and intense.

If Misia respects the orthodoxy of this art, so deeply indissociable of the Portuguese culture, she also knew how to renew it fundamentally, enriching the tradition with new literary references, by setting verses from poets of the past, or having songs especially written for her by contemporary artists.

After Garras Dos Sentidos, still fundamentally rooted in the pure ‘fadist’ tradition, Paixoes Diagonais (Diagonal Passions), clever mix of traditional et contemporary fados, and Ritual, where the shadow Amalia Rodriguès wanders in a moonlike incandescence, Misia offers in her new album Canto, an original and ambitious project, resulting from the meeting of different artistic languages, inspired by the Portuguese composer’s music: Carlos Paredes. Her refusal of musical fashions gives a striking sensitivy to her music. From songs nourished by the talent and the generosity of lyricists and writers arise poems of an stirring beauty. On this album, Misia surrounds herself with her Portuguese musicians but also with a classical string quintet, who gives an additional extent to the Carlos Paredes’s music.

Then it stands out an instrumental song which is not only supported by the Portuguese guitar  but  also by a voice. A voice always inhabited by the spirit of fado, this music full of spirituality which is not less physical and from where burst out nuances of the more intimate feelings which only require to be set free and sung. Delightful.