Moreno Veloso

Moreno Veloso, offspring of the Brazilian music icon Caetano Veloso, first lifted his voice at age three. Six years afterward he sharpened those instincts by studying classical guitar. His songwriting debut arrived in 1982 with “Um Canto de Afoxé Para Bloco do lle,” a track placed on Caetano Veloso’s Cores, Nomes. While still a teenager Veloso took up Latin percussion, traveling with his father and Gilberto Gil before switching to cello for Carlinhos Brown. Early-’90s physics classes failed to eclipse his stronger pull toward music, and during those same years he assembled a private studio where he mixed sound for television programs and stage productions.

A concert shared with Alexandre Kassin and Domenico Lancellotti—merging Brazilian rhythms and electronic textures—prompted the three to record the experimental set Music Typewriter, produced by Andrés Levin. Issued as Maquina de Escrever Musica +2, the album became a major success in Brazil. Lancellotti +2’s Sincerely Hot followed in 2003, and a DJ remix of Moreno’s material appeared in 2004; Kassin +2’s Futurismo closed the trilogy in 2007.

Outside his own projects Veloso joined his father both onstage and in the studio, producing three Caetano Veloso albums, among them the award-winning 2012 release Abraçaço, which he co-produced with guitarist Pedro Sá. Thirteen years after his first record, Moreno returned in September 2014 with the sophomore album Coisa Boa. Captured across multiple continents, the sessions drew on a rotating pool of thirty musicians that included Sá, Arto Lindsay, Melvin Gibbs, Daniel Johns, Rodrigo Bartolo, Rodrigo Amarante, and vocalist Takako Minekawa.