Sessa

São Paulo-born singer, songwriter and producer Sessa has made a name for himself worldwide with his modern interpretation of the musical traditions of his native Brazil. The New Yorker magazine celebrated him as "a songwriter cut from Veloso's mold and blessed with a flair for the intimate, the enigmatic and the licentious". Sessa's songs are sung in Portuguese, with sensual lyrics and melodic flourishes that complement the work of giants such as Tom Jobim or Arthur Verocai. However, Sessa's music is deliberately minimalist, rarely found in contemporary Brazilian music, and is more reminiscent of the unabashed sparseness of a Leonard Cohen.

Sessa's live performances are enchanting experiences in which both the performers and the audience are powerlessly at the mercy of the music's momentum. While the songs often deal with themes of the sensual body and spiritual transcendence, the music points in a new, more subtle direction for Brazilian pop music - a deep, minimalist, almost implied use of the infinitely rich textures and rhythms that make up Brazil's songwriting history and that place Sessa among the country's most promising new voices.