Rodrigo Leão
Cinema

You can close your eyes.
The screening begins.
The images flow on your private screen, which materializes in a place suspended between memory and imagination.

The beginning is perfect.
The space that unfolds to the notes of "Cinema", the instrumental track that opens and titles the album, has the ethereal consistency of a dream and such evocative power that it makes your transformation into the director of a sequence feel natural, probably tinged with a sense of nostalgia and unsettling desire.
Nino Rota is the first name that will come to mind.
But immediately afterwards, you will be pierced by an image stored in some unknown corner of your heart: it will be brought to light by the softness of a voice and a subtle rain of notes, drops distilled from a piano against the backdrop drawn by the strings.
"Rosa" is a song, Sakamoto arranges it together with its author. And Rosa is the name of Passos, the Brazilian singer who interprets it.
But this does not stop being a film.
And in the scene change, you are transported to an environment of smoky restlessness, reminiscent of Weill but added with a languor that Beth Gibbons knows how to make her own and transform into a small enigma titled "Lonely Carousel".
Then other spaces, instrumental tracks that unfold possible scenarios by moving the imaginary camera over areas now illuminated by the lights of distant afternoons, now crossed by gusts of mild unease.
But wherever you happen to set the plot, whatever image emerges, it will always be the quality of the air guiding you: light and rarefied will support your journey.

A portrait of Europe.
"Cinema" is the latest album by Rodrigo Leão, founding member of Madredeus, pianist, and composer active for over twenty years, endowed with undeniable qualities also as an arranger.
The 15 tracks that flow through the 49 minutes of the album, whether songs hosting the vocal performances of different singers (the former Portishead, precisely, or Passos, but also the Portuguese Sónia Tavares or the Belgian model/actress, of Portuguese descent, Helena Noguerra) or brief instrumental scenes, are indeed characterized by a delightful balance.
Free of emphatic temptations, played entirely on hints and the clarity of sounds and writing, it is able to naturally combine the inevitable vein of saudade with the various suggestions present, thanks to the careful lightness with which Leão's piano intertwines with violins, accordion, or the winds that punctuate some tracks, in an interweaving that outlines a sort of intimate and theatrical essence of very European taste.
A Europe that hosts, in the finale, the unmistakable profile of Ryuichi Sakamoto, engaged at the piano in the execution of an instrumental piece.
On those notes, which project onto your inner screen a horizon both ethereal and evocative, it will not be difficult for you to set the final scene and your very personal credits.
In mine, a small invitation flows: dedicate one of those slightly indolent and suspended evenings to it, crossed by an indefinable desire and an air clear and just moved by a breath of wind.
I don't think you'll regret it.