Maria Teresa de Almeida Salgueiro (Amadora, January 8, 1969) is a Portuguese singer, best known as the lead singer of the group Madredeus, from 1986 to 2007.
Her career began unexpectedly, in 1986, when two of the group’s founders (Rodrigo Leão and Gabriel Gomes) discovered her while she was singing with a group of friends at a table next to theirs, in a tavern in Bairro Alto, Lisbon. After her first audition with Pedro Ayres Magalhães, another of the founders of Madredeus, Teresa Salgueiro became the voice and, in the words of Magalhães, “the greatest inspiration of the group’s music”.
Teresa Salgueiro is a soprano with a vast vocal range, with an innate talent for music. It can be said that her voice, despite having matured, still has typical characteristics of a soprano. Her musical training took place during the first years of Madredeus’ life, when she attended singing classes for two years, but the group’s international commitments ended up preventing the singer from continuing with a formal musical education. On June 9, 1995, she was made an Officer of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.
In 2005, a compilation of various participations and collaborations that she made with other artists was edited while she was still part of the Madredeus group. “Obrigado” features songs whose variety of styles and times of recording show the singer’s versatility; among others, the album features songs that Teresa Salgueiro recorded with António Chainho, with the Catalan tenor Josep Carreras, with the Brazilian singers and composers Caetano Veloso and Zeca Baleiro (in an album of songs by the Italian composer Aldo Brizzi), with the Portuguese duo Mário Laginha and Maria João, with the Galician composer Carlos Núñez, with the Italian composer Angelo Branduardi and with the Japanese accordionist Coba, among others.
In 2007, Madredeus decided to take a sabbatical and its members dedicated themselves to parallel musical projects. In February of that year, Teresa released the album “You and I”, which revisits a repertoire of great songs in Brazilian popular music: from Pixinguinha to Dorival Caymmi, including Antônio Carlos Jobim and Chico Buarque.
In the same year, Teresa presented the show “La Serena” with themes sung in several languages, accompanied by the Lusitânia Ensemble — a group of musicians, mostly from the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra. The concert spawned the album “La Serena”, released in October 2007. The album’s repertoire includes famous songs from different countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean.
Also in 2007, Teresa Salgueiro was invited to participate in the album “Silence, Night and Dreams”, by the Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner. On the album, released by the erudite label EMI Classics, she has a prominent participation where she interprets pieces in English and Latin. Preisner, known for his collaborations with Polish filmmaker Kieslowski, claimed to have composed “Silence, Night & Dreams” thinking about the singer’s “pure and clean and vibrato free” voice.
On November 28, 2007, the departure of Teresa Salgueiro, Fernando Júdice and José Peixoto from Madredeus is announced.
In August 2008 she met again with the Lusitânia Ensemble, with the idea of collecting a repertoire that portrayed the different times, traditions, regions and Portuguese customs. Thus was born the album “Matriz”, whose concerts toured Europe and Africa.
“Voltarei à minha Terra” was a journey through the collective memory of Portuguese music from the 20th century. XX. With a new line-up, Teresa Salgueiro took charge of directing the musical arrangements where she tried to design an original language that translates a poetic universe, born of Portuguese words and feelings.
This 25-year journey of uninterrupted dedication to music culminates in the creation of a workshop for composing original pieces that are born from Teresa’s meeting with the musicians she chose. For the first time in her career, she dedicates herself to writing and composing all the themes.
During the month of August 2011, Teresa and her group of musicians retired to the Convent of Arrábida, in the surroundings of the Serra. In an annex to the Convent, they set up a recording studio where they recorded the seventeen songs that gave rise to the album “O Mistério”. She invited António Pinheiro da Silva, with whom she shared the first ten years of recordings and concerts of her life with Madredeus, to co-produce this new album.
He collaborates again with the Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, known for the soundtracks of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films, for the recording of the DVD “Wielkie Monologi”.
O Horizonte, her new authorial album, is the affirmation of her facet as a composer and lyricist, expressed in the creation and interpretation of an original repertoire.
