Eugénia Melo e Castro | |
Birth Name: | Maria Eugénia Menéres de Melo e Castro |
Birth Date: | 6 June 1958 |
Birth Place: | Covilhã, Portugal |
Occupation: | Singer-songwriter |
Years Active: | 1979–present |
Eugénia Melo e Castro, born Maria Eugénia Menéres de Melo e Castro (Covilhã, 6 June 1958) is a Portuguese singer-songwriter.
Eugénia was born in the city of Covilhã, central inland Portugal, in 1958, and lived in the city until she was 15. She left the city for studying in Lisbon. Her father, Ernesto de Melo e Castro, is a poet, professor and textile engineer (Bradford, United Kingdom) who earned a doctorate in literature from the University of São Paulo, and her mother Maria Alberta Menéres, was a writer. Her grandfather, a chemical engineer, was a noted entrepreneur in the important textiles industrial sector of Covilhã. Her grandfather Ernesto was a conductor, composer, and violinist. Her first contact with the professional music scene came through collaborative works for José Afonso, Vitorino and Sérgio Godinho, among others. Eugénia studied and lived in different locations during her teen years, and when she was 21, already divorced and mother of a girl, she went to Brazil to pursue her desire of being a singer-songwriter. She maintains houses in São Paulo (Brazil) and in Portugal. Melo e Castro has Portuguese Jewish ancestry.[1]
Her first album, released in 1982,Terra de Mel, included collaborations of several Portuguese and Brazilian musicians. These associations have been often in the rest of her discography. Her music is framed in MPB (Brazilian Popular Music). She made theatre in 1977/78 with A Barraca (Portugal) and appeared in a number of movie and television works.
In 2015 he releases his first children's album, "Conversas com Versos", 14 poems by his mother, taken from the book of the same name. Ney Matogrosso is her guest on this record, on the track O MEU CHAPÉU.
In 2018 he releases MAR VIRTUAL, piano and voice, with Emilio Mendonça, dedicated to the work of his father, putting to music experimental poems, and concrete poetry.