SALVADOR SOBRAL

The Lisbon born Salvador Sobral emerged, fully formed, into the spotlight when his entry, Amar Pelos Dois, won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017 with the competition’s highest ever winning score. The following year when he performed again at Eurovision, in a duet with Brazil’s Caetano Veloso, he hinted at the serious musical chops behind his sudden fame. Sobral sang from a young age, and performed on television for the first time at the age of ten. In his twenties, he dropped out of psychology studies in order to explore music in Mallorca and later studied jazz in Barcelona, he returned to Portugal at the end of 2014 and began collaborating with some of the country’s biggest jazz artists, creating his first album Excuse Me (2016). In 2017 his sister Luísa Sobral was invited by the Portuguese national broadcaster to write a song for Festival da Canção, the winner of which represents Portugal at the Eurovision Song Contest. She asked Salvador to sing it and, when he won, he was off to Eurovision and sensationally won that with Amar Pelos Dois. A simple, sweet and melancholy ballad, as Salvador said afterwards, “Music is not fireworks, music is feeling”. It is today one of the most popular songs in the Portuguese language in the world. After an absence due to severe health problems, he is back now with his new album Paris, Lisboa - a multilingual exploration of the two cities inspired by a journey between them. The record is also a homage to Wim Wenders’ classic film ‘Paris, Texas.’ Salvador will perform accompanied by musicians Júlio Resende, André Rosina, and Bruno Pedroso. “The extreme expressiveness of Sobral turns each performance into a unique interpretation.” ABC “Reminds us that Portuguese is quite possibly the loveliest language in which to sing soft, good, songs.” The Guardian