Maria João | OGRE electric
description:
We’re an innovative jazz & electronic quartet that fuses different musical styles, from funk and hip hop to pop and classical — all showcasing Maria João’s unique, internationally acclaimed vocal style. We’ve been creating music together for 14 years.
The project had it’s genesis around 2009 and as gone through several identities and formations that while centered around electric pianos, synths and electronics sometimes also includes acoustic piano and drums. It’s core focus is mixing a jazz like approach to original music creation and arranging with electronics in an organic interactive way. Although it borrows influences from several music styles it’s hard to define a concrete style as it’s not purely Jazz or EDM.
OGRE has released four albums: “Electrodoméstico” in 2012, “Plástico” in 2015, “Open Your Mouth” released on Sept 2020. We just released “Songs for Shakespeare” our fourth album in the fall of 2022! 🥳 It fuses the genius of one of the world’s best-loved writers with a bold, innovative electronic style.
Electrodoméstico:
The OGRE project is born out of the creativity of five musicians with different skillsets and sound universes, building a coherent and… indefinable whole.
Maria João vocalizes this “giant ogre, devourer of various musical languages”, together with the pianos and keyboards of João Farinha and Júlio Resende, the drums of Joel Silva and the electronics of André Nascimento.
Between their own compositions and foreign themes, the goal was, above all, to serve music and it is under this premise that they present us their first album, Electrodoméstico. What emerges from this promiscuous encounter is something strange and magical, which, after all, lives in the imagination of each one.
Maria João – vocals
João Farinha – electric pianos, synthesizers
Júlio Resende – piano
André Nascimento – electronics
Joel Silva – drums
Recorded and Mastered @ Valentim de Carvalho, Lisbon by Nelson Carvalho
Photographs by Hervé Hette
Album artwork and design by Jonas Grancha
2012 – JACC Records
Plástico:
Plástico is the second album from OGRE, Maria João’s jazz and electronic music band.
An unusual instrumental line-up and an outside-the-box approach takes audiences on a trip through a world of sounds, criss-crossing the borders between digital and analogue.
*All music composed and arranged by João Farinha with the exception of #8 by Júlio Resende and #12 by André Nascimento. “Blackbird” fragment on #9 composed by Paul McCartney.
*All lyrics written by Maria João with the exception of “I Get a Kick out of You” by Cole Porter in #7 and “Blackbird” by Paul McCartney in #9.
Maria João – vocals
João Farinha – electric pianos, synthesizers
Júlio Resende – piano
André Nascimento – electronics
Joel Silva – drums
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Nelson Carvalho @ Estúdios Valentim de Carvalho, Paço de Arcos, Portugal
Photography by Alexandre Cabrita
Make Up – Carina Quintiliano
Album Artwork Concept and Design by Norbert Bakos
2015 – Espuma Preta