From 6 December 2019 to 27 December 2020, the Natural History and Science Museum of the University of Porto (MHNC-UP) hosts, in its core pole (Historical Building of the Rectory of the University of Porto, near Cordoaria Garden), the exhibition Cultures and Geographies. Marking its centennial commemorations, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto (FLUP) co-organizes with the MHNC-UP, and in collaboration with the Soares dos Reis National Museum, an exhibition that presents the collections that were part of the its museology and artistic holdings during the first phase of its existence (1919-1931). Originally used as teaching resources in three museum-rooms of the first FLUP, these collections, which, in 1941, moved to the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, are now in the care of MHNC-UP. Through a set of 250 extraordinary pieces of archaeology and ethnography, visitors will be invited to travel over time and explore ways of life, experiences and rituals of human communities on each of the five continents.

The exhibition "Revolução de 24 de Agosto de 1820: Prelúdio do Liberalismo em Portugal" will open at Museu Militar do Porto, curated by Fernando Gonçalves. Open to the public for ten months (until 1 August 2021), the exhibition depicts the bravery of a group of notable citizens of Porto, who took the first step towards the end of the British influence and the resulting liberal monarchy 200 years ago. The North demanded the return of the King, a Constitution, justice, and prosperity. The seeds of progress and modernity were sown in Portugal and there are documents and historical items that prove it.

More than 200 forged paintings, seized in the last 15 years by Diretoria do Norte da Polícia Judiciária (detective force), are on display at Alfândega do Porto. "A Arte do Falso" gathers not only counterfeit works of names like Picasso, Júlio Pomar, Cesariny, Malangatana, Amadeo Souza Cardoso, but also unusual objects that reveal the genius of criminals. Between counterfeit banknotes, umbrellas that turn into weapons, paintings exhibited at art gallery auctions that had been screened by specialists, the exhibition holds many surprises, including a machine that would have the gift of healing people all over the world by simply turning on some lights. The forged works on display to the public were located by the detectives of the police force, mainly in the urban areas of Lisbon and Porto, in art galleries, auctions, fairs, exhibitions and antique shops. In the exhibition there is also a space dedicated to the little ones, where they can take fingerprints and compare them on different surfaces.

In an increasingly digital and fast-moving world, there is a need to slow down and develop new presentation formats and, above all, new creation formats and ways of working that will allow us to continue to consolidate artistic works in today's reality. In a hybrid season between live and digital, Teatro Municipal do Porto invites 10 artists for a special collaboration, designed specifically for online platforms, where a filmmaker and a performing artist, in pairs and in an equal relationship, are invited to create a new digital object that crosses their universes and discourses. The moving image intersects with the areas of dance, contemporary circus, literature, theatre and animated forms, thus also allowing various audiences, even the most distant, to access these works.

R. H. Quaytman employs mechanical reproduction techniques and conceptual art traditions to create closed series of works divided into chapters. Subsequent parts are numbered to mark the passage of time and gradually completing life and artistic project. The artist treats all exhibitions and paintings presented as one creative undertaking. R. H. Quaytman approaches painting as if it were poetry: when reading a poem, one notices specific words, we realise that each word has a resonance. Quaytman's paintings, organised into chapters structured like a book, have grammar, syntax and vocabulary. While the work is delimited by a rigid structure on a material level - they appear only in bevelled plywood panels in eight predetermined sizes derived from the golden ratio - the open-ended content creates permutations that result in an endless archive. Quaytman's practice engages three distinct stylistic modes: silkscreen based on photographs, optical patterns such as moiré and scintillating grids, and small hand-painted oil works. Quaytman's work, presented for the first time in Portugal, points to the new possibilities of today's painting. What is a painting, an icon? What are the means of painting in a culture saturated by visual stimulation, from photography to the digital forest of signs? Is painting still a relevant medium to share our story? The exhibition is co-organised by Muzeum Sztuki in Lódz, Poland, and by Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto. Curated by Jaroslaw Suchan

This is the first exhibition in Portugal by Korakrit Arunanondchai (Thailand, 1986), an artist who works in the fields of video, performance, sculpture and installation and who interacts between two cultures: born and raised in Asia he moved to the US in 2009 to study art and currently lives between New York and Bangkok. Arunanondchai's work explores and brings together themes such as Eastern religion and mythology, environment, ecology, music, geopolitics and technological development, contrasting Asian spirituality with Western pragmatism. Arunanondchai reflects on contemporary life and the human condition in the era of technology, speculating on the consequences of the Anthropocene, a recently definition that sees the effect of human activity as the main environmental force on the planet, capable of altering its geological composition. In his practice, the artist uses autobiographical events and experiences. Friends and family participate and are somehow involved in several of his works. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 (2019) is an installation made in partnership with the artist Alex Gvojic (U.S., 1984), a friend with whom he has been working for several years. Boychild, an artist linked to performance and dance who has regularly collaborated with Korakrit Arunanondchai, is also featured in this piece. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 envelops visitors in a mysterious and nocturnal environment in which a triple video projection is combined with laser rays emitted by a sculpture reminiscent of a lying human figure. The earth that covers the floor and the presence of natural materials (seashells, twigs) suggest a pre or post, historical environment. No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 comprises a wide range of images and sounds, o generate an excessive, enveloping and disturbing atmosphere. The videos mix original footage - such as that captured by a drone of the Ramasum Camp radio station, a symbol of Thailand's recent history as an ally of the USA during the Vietnam War and now transformed into a tourist destination - and other pre-existing ones, such as television broadcast of of the rescue of 12 boys and their football coach who were trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018. This work was initially commissioned by the Center d’Art Contemporain Genève for the 2018 Biennale of Moving Image and presented at the Venice Biennale in 2019.

Specifically conceived for the Contemporary Gallery, Hugo Canoilas' first exhibition (Lisbon, 1977) at the Serralves Museum is both a confirmation and expansion some core concerns in his practice: a speculative approach to the relationship between art and reality (social and political events), a questioning of the characteristics and boundaries of painting, and the emphasis given to collaborative work. With a background in painting, Canoilas has been examining the place of this artistic medium, how it is perceived both by museum visitors and passers-by (the artist is known for public space interventions which are never advertised as works of art). In the case of this exhibition at Serralves, Canoilas dispensed with the place where paintings are most expected to be found - the gallery walls - and decides to intervene on the floor, skirting board and ceiling of the Contemporary Gallery - spaces neglected by most painting exhibitions. On the floor there are three coloured glass pieces that represent jellyfish. Made in Marinha Grande, these jellyfish - possible symbols of climate warming, but also of such ideas as formlessness and metamorphosis on which several works by Hugo Canoilas are based – are meant to be stepped on by visitors. The main role given to the floor is confirmed by the skirting board-painting (a light box, featuring a painting on linen stretched like a canvas, delimiting the space of the exhibition), in which the artist draws attention to an architectural element that is as common as it is unnoticed. On the gallery ceiling, Hugo Canoilas will create a gestural painting that, like his most recent abstract paintings, is based on images of the seabed’s flora and fauna. It should be noted that the painting also functions as a lightbox that creates an aura in the room, affecting the perception of the jellyfish. Jellyfish are fascinating animals that, throughout their unusual life cycles undergo various metamorphoses and reproduce cells in unusual ways. His observation, which witnesses dramatic variations in configuration, defies all notions of stability and all ideas on the relationship between the parts and the whole. Just like this exhibition by Hugo Canoilas, comprised of three distinct elements - floor, skirting board and ceiling - that influence one another (in cooperation, symbiosis, competition, predation and parasitism) and which is an embodiment of an artistic practice that does not crystallize in a form, but which constantly question themselves about its own limits, functions and assumptions.

The more than one hundred photographs on display in the Manoel de Oliveira Fotógrafo exhibition are one of the big surprises that the director’s personal archive, entirely deposited in Serralves, had been holding. Produced between the late 1930s and the mid-1950s, these images, stored for several decades and mostly never-before-seen, reveal an unknown facet of Oliveira and open new perspectives on how his filmmaking developed. Manoel de Oliveira's passage through the static image is a decisive stage in his career as a filmmaker. In dialogue with both pictorialism, constructivism and Bauhaus' experiments, his photographs are halfway between exploring the classical values of composition and the modernist spirit running through the entire first phase of his film work. Used mostly artistically, photography is for the director an instrument of formal research and experimentation, another way of questioning, often in direct relationship with films, to building his own visual language. These images that are now on view, certainly add a new chapter to the history of Portuguese photography of the 1940s. But they are also a precious instrument to better understand the way Manoel de Oliveira took on, during a period of ten years, the direction of photography of his own films, as well as to contextualize, from a broader perspective, the strict composition that, in general, featured in all his films. Looking at these images, it will not be of much interest to know where the photographer begins and where the filmmaker ends, nor to define, with precision, the extent to which the first one may have sometimes taken the place of the second one. What is important, is to question how this coexistence between two ways of seeing and thinking is embodied in Manoel de Oliveira's work. Curated by António Preto, Director of Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira. All the photographs on display belong to the Manoel de Oliveira Collection, Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira - Fundação de Serralves, Porto.

The Mercado da Ribeira consists of 10 stores, and was created after the renovation of the old market. Food products in its traditional form, tourist products and restaurants. Location: Cais da Ribeira (near the north pillar of Luiz I Bridge).

Alfredo Cunha who we are talking about is the man with his camera and his gaze. Any good photojournalist senses, before he knows it clearly, that an image, which must contain all content and seduction, is, has always been a decisive moment. Before being defined by Cartier-Bresson, it already existed in the mind of those who photograph the event, the face and the movement. In Alfredo Cunha's long 50-year career, much has changed: the country he photographs; the equipment he uses - far from the very first Petri FT, the Leica M3, which he started using in 1973, and all the Leicas that followed and which he has always remained faithful to; photography - from analog, mostly black and white, to digital, which he has been using since 2003. The photojournalistic image responds to the requirement of agreement with the text, it is also linked to where, when, how and why. However, when the photographer has already defined his style, and this is the case of Alfredo Cunha, the seduction of the image overlaps the seduction of the news. In all of them it becomes difficult to associate the image with a style because Alfredo Cunha goes beyond the current trend and theme. And it is in this regard that we can say, with Barthes, that his photographs are the result without a code, they depend on the transmission of his for our affection. Teresa Siza (adapted text)

Keeping the tradition, Sport Comércio e Salgueiros will organise the 63rd edition of Volta a Paranhos, this time in a virtual format that will last for a week, between 2 and 8 December. The road race organised uninterruptedly for the longest time in Portugal thus safely crosses the borders of the parish of Paranhos, inviting the participation of all athletes and sportsmen, anywhere in the country or in the world. Traditionally held on the bank holiday of December 8th, Volta a Paranhos honors its legacy and, even in a different model, will mark the 109 years of Sport Comércio e Salgueiros. The public can choose between two different options: the 10 km race, for those over 18 years old, or the 5 km walk, for all ages.

This big exhibition dedicated to the oeuvre by Louise Bourgeois (Paris, 1911, New York, 2010) spans seven decades, showing works made by the artist between the late 1940s and 2010. Visited and revisited in countless exhibitions held over the past decades in various museum spaces around the world, Louise Bourgeois’ vast and unique body of work deals with themes indelibly associated with experiences and traumatic events of her childhood - family, sexuality, body, death and the unconscious - which the artist treated and exorcised through her art. This exhibition is organised by the Serralves Foundation - Museum of Contemporary Art and the Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland, USA, in collaboration with The Easton Foundation, New York, and co-produced with the Voorlinden Museum & Gardens, Wassenaar, Netherlands. To Unravel a Torment is curated by Emily Wei Rales, Director and co-founder of the Glenstone Museum. At Serralves, the exhibition was organised by Philippe Vergne, Director of the Museum, with Paula Fernandes, Curator. This exhibition was generously supported by Hauser & Wirth Gallery.

This exhibition marks the Centenary of the Birth of my Father, Doctor Leonel Augusto de Almeida Abrantes (1920-2020), with a special connection to Serra da Estrela, which he researched and wrote about. In this collective exhibition, “O sortilégio da Serra da Estrela”, taking place at Galeria Porto Oriental, from 4 December 2020 to 27 March 2021, it shows Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. In the exhibition, “O sortilégio da Serra da Estrela”, 26 works by 26 artists can be admired, with different paths, ages, sensitivities and languages. The Serra that fascinates us, really or symbolically, enable us here another enchantment and emotion, in the contemplation not of «the mountain in the distance in all its magnitude», by Vergílio Ferreira, but of the works of art exhibited at Galeria Porto Oriental that refer to it, whatever the perspective of each artist and the chosen language, technique and visual expression.

The Second Symphony already shows the inventiveness that denounces Beethoven's immortal genius, marking the crucial moment in his life when he realizes the irreversibility of his deafness. From then on, he would explore fields that others did not dream of exploring. This was the culmination of a first phase of the composer and a prelude to other more revolutionary works, the symphony is marked by an inner struggle that critics perceived as the image of a wounded dragon struggling to live. The programme also gives the opportunity to listen to pianist Nicolas Hodges.

Clã perform at Cultura em Expansão in the year of release of their most recent album, Véspera, released during the lockdown period. This will be a concert which will play the tracks that make up the new album, the ninth one by the band, and which features songs written by Sérgio Godinho, Samuel Úria, Capicua, Carlos Tê, Aurora Robalinho, Regina Guimarães and Arnaldo Antunes, and songs written by Hélder Gonçalves. There will also be the unforgettable songs that are part of the history of the band and of all of us. Twenty-eight years after the band formed, Clã stand out as an indisputable leader in national pop / rock music, with a career marked by the constant exploration of new approaches in song writing, artistic partnerships that do not end in national territory and collaborations that extend to other artistic universes such as theatre and cinema.

Spontaneous and popular fair where you can buy birds, food and cages. Even if you do not want to buy anything, you can enjoy the singing birds, their colour and the liveliness of the fair. When passing through the fair, one must take a look at the breath-taking view of the Douro River and its bridges.

A gathering place for various collectors, this fair has as purpose the sale and exchange of coins, postcards, stamps and other related collectibles. It takes place under the arcades of the buildings surrounding the square.

We can read, right on the first page of The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, that to get to know an exceptional person one must observe him/her for many years. If we observed the protagonist of history for decades - and other planters in Brazil, India, etc. - we would see how, with the passing of the slow time over the years, they left behind forests built acorn by acorn, shoot by shoot. As we look at the landscape, we see its enormous life project, made up of small, generous and patient gestures, which wait years to know their wonderful result. When looking at the trail that we leave behind in our day-to-day life, made up of small disinterested and careless gestures, we see a sea of plastic, disappeared species, deforestation and climate change. We urgently need to look at the impact of our actions not only today, but yesterday and tomorrow of our lives.

# Contamination, Contagion, El-dorado, Vocoder, Neo-Orpheus, Oracle Machine, Mineral Blood, Prosthetic Vampire, Bacteriological Lake, Red Death Mask, Necromancer, Subsonic, Surface, Landscape # An oracular monodrama based on a mineral-organic testimony. Mercúrio Vermelho (Red Mercury) is an acoustic and visual journey that follows the delirium of the extraction of precious metals through the testimony of one of its most elusive figures, red mercury. This monologue is meant for a synthetic voice and is performed by a vampire - he who sucks the blood of the earth - at a threshold where both contaminate one another, evoking their crossed paths as well as the multiple stories, myths and conspiracy theories that surround them. Shot in Kampala, Uganda, during the covid-19 lockdown, Mercúrio Vermelho is screened as a synthetic landscape through which the visitor has to walk. - Jonathan Saldanha

In Festa de 15 Anos (Quinceañera), the Portuguese playwright Mickaël de Oliveira joins his Brazilian counterpart Diego Bagagal in creating a show that intends to rethink the dynamics and repercussions in our contemporary neocolonialist practices. A wealthy Portuguese family adopts, out of necessity, a young Brazilian boy of indigenous descent and for whom they organise a quinceañera, a common social ritual in the Americas, a debutante ball to present him to Portuguese society, which will end up tainted by tragedy and horror. Mixing the private and the political, Festa de 15 Anos looks into the legacy of colonization, its moral heritage, fetishisation of minorities, and shows how difficult it is to create “syntheses that will comfort and set us free as individuals within a community”. In this allegory inspired by the horror cinema, Mickaël de Oliveira thickens the work undertaken in Sócrates Tem de Morrer (2018).

Três Tristes Tigres present their new album, Mínima Luz, at Associação de Moradores do Bairro Social da Pasteleira – Previdência/Torres. From the sung word to the spoken word, from solo projects to continuing collaborating in Osso Vaidoso, Ana Deus and Alexandre Soares are, by their own merit, two of the most creative Portuguese authors of the last decade, in music and in interweaving dance, theatre or literature. Oblivious to nostalgia or repetition, Três Tristes Tigres are back to creating new songs, after a hiatus of seventeen years, shows us a path of musical reinvention that gives a framework to the poetry by Regina Guimarães, Langston Hughes, William Blake and Luca Argel. In this concert, the duo will be accompanied on stage by Miguel Ferreira (keyboards / programming), João Pedro Coimbra (percussion and sampler) and Rui Martelo (bass).

How powerful is laziness? How powerful is waiting? At a time when chronological time, that of the watch, imposes itself on time “to”, that of the heart, a giant plush sloth, completely useless, even as a plush doll, is there, waiting for us. Which is to say, waiting for nothing. A pink plush sloth following us, invisible, while we wait. And showing itself at the right moment to remind us that waiting is not the same as despairing. Taking the form of an immersive installation, Haiku is a praise to sloth (animal) and laziness (capital), both of which are on the verge of extinction.

Lágrimas de crocodilo (Crocodile tears) have as their starting point the analysis of the type of crying that gives the performance its title - an expression used to refer to a fake cry. This work is based on that notion of tantrum – an insincere display of emotions used as a strategy to attain certain purposes. Since this expression mostly applies to children, we start from tantrum in this age group and explore its development in “the older ones”. Which forms does a child's fake crying take and how does this same type of emotional manipulation strategy develop to similar behaviours in adulthood? In which situations are children and adults more likely to shed “crocodile tears”? And to attain exactly what? - Guilherme de Sousa & Pedro Azevedo

Bruno Gomes Ferreira started his musical studies at the age of four at the ArtEduca Music Academy in Vila Nova de Famalicão. He studied piano with teachers Marian Pivka and Álvaro Teixeira Lopes and, at the same time, he studied cello with his father António Ferreira. In 2012, he entered into Conservatório de Música Calouste Gulbenkian de Braga, where he completed the 8th grade of piano, getting the highest grade. He attended proficiency courses with pianists Tatiana Sarkissova, Guigla Katsarava, Carles Lama, Erik Tawatstjerna, Dmitri Alexeev, Stephen Kovacevich, and many more. He was awarded several first prizes such as the 13th International Piano Competition Alexander Scriabin in Paris (2013), 15th International Piano Competition Santa Cecília in Porto (cat. Júnior) (2013) and the 18th International Competition Cidade do Fundão (2017). Since 2015, he has been performing solo and playing chamber music at the Victoria Hall in Geneva, at Palacete de Viscondes de Balsemão in Porto, at Casa da Música, in Bom Jesus and at Theatro Circo in Braga, where he performed Grieg’s Concerto for piano and orchestra under the direction of Jean-Jacques Béreau, at the Municipal Auditorium of Póvoa de Varzim and at the XXXI Pará International Music Festival, Belém, Brazil. In June 2018, he finished his degree, getting the highest grade in the final exam, in the class of Professor Dominique Weber, at Haute École de Musique de Genève, Geneva, where he also finished his master's degree in the class of professor Cédric Pescia in 2020. He was a scholarship holder of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

A melody can also be a memory of a place. This is how Tchaikovsky felt when he named his ultimate piece of chamber music as Souvenir of Florence, thus highlighting the melody of the second movement that evokes the Italian city. Under the direction of one of the great conductors of the Russian school, Orquestra Sinfónica with Helena Marinho unveils the mysteries of this score written for the unusual formation of two violins, two violas and two cellos.

With his cross reading of Racine and Artaud, Frank Castorf, long-time director of Volksbühne in Berlin, offers a theatre of the word, between the Baroque poet who uses language to create the mechanism that will set free the desire and the demon who shatters and reinvents language to rebuild himself. Bajazet, considering the Theatre and the Plague (2019) is also a celebration of Castorf’s theatre, a state of urgency made of immoderation and vitalism, a territory of contradictions and revelations, in a game where the mixing of languages serves a ferociously subtle direction of actors. The cast, entirely French, matured in Racine’s tragic words and Artaud’s theatrical essentialism, is completed with the presence of Jeanne Balibar, a French theatre and film star, who starred in Ne change rien, film by Pedro Costa.

In 1520, Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan) explored seas never sailed before. In 2020, Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa takes to Coliseu scores never before played and iconic pieces, on a great journey through the sounds of countries that comprised the first voyage around of the world: Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Philippines and South Africa. At the end of this commented concert, a Christmas “present” is reserved. “Sete Mares” celebrates the 5th centenary of Circumnavigation, started by the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães, and ended by the Spanish Elcano. Therefore, the first piece could only be a Portuguese piece, with “Staccato Brilhante Op. 69” by Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988), one of the greatest Portuguese composers of the 20th century. The armada left Seville for Brazil. “Psalmus” by Brazilian composer/conductor João Guilherme Ripper (1959), is, therefore, the first stopover, with a rhythmic and dramatic score that will be played for the first time in Portugal. In homage to the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, located between Argentina and Chile, Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa makes history by choosing Coliseu for the world premiere of “Faro de Ultima Esperanza” by Chilean composer Rafael Díaz (1965). To take us to Argentina, the birthplace of Tango, we will hear the beautiful “Oblivion” by Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992). Upon arriving in Asia, we will be greeted by “Locomotion” by the Filipino Saunder Choi (1988). And the passage through the Cape of Good Hope, which proved that the Earth is round and cleared the dark clouds of a trip without Fernão de Magalhães on board, could have been none other soundtrack than "Clouds Clearing". Celebrated as a work of freedom, it was composed by South African Hans Roosenschoon in 1994, the year in which South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, was elected. The composer chosen to symbolise the return to Europe is Beethoven (1770-1826), also a forerunner of new routes, not maritime but musical. We will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth precisely on the day he was baptized, on 17 December 1770, with one of his most extraordinary works, the 7th Symphony. At a time when culture also paves the way to new worlds, “Sete Mares”, which has the comments by maestro Osvaldo Ferreira, is the great journey that ends 2020, at a Coliseu Porto Ageas with a safe reduced capacity.

“You can’t make good theatre without a few beautiful things”, João Botelho tells us, so it is no surprise that he brings to the stage what is, in the words of Hannah Arendt, the “most beautiful love story in German literature ”. We speak of Zerline’s Tale, the story that Austrian writer Hermann Broch included in his novel The Guiltless, published in 1950. Zerline is an old servant who retrospectively reveals a story of passion that involves herself, her female employer and her lover. A story shot through sexual and class resentment, a primal eroticism and an ethical obsession, in which Broch's character unfolds her status: servant, lover, governess, spy, instigator of madness, jealousy and revenge. This intense monologue becomes “true” in the voice of Luísa Cruz, whose performance won her a Globo de Ouro in 2019. “A beautiful and prodigious actress”, according to João Botelho, a filmmaker who makes his debut (finally!) in the theatre, a place of shadows and intimacies, pierced here by a ray of light that injures “the obscurity where the revelation and triumph of the text must take place”.

1984. We dive into a whirlwind. The ego is put to the test, primary instincts sneakily emerge from the tough and well-crafted leather that we put on for others. Perhaps a lunatic is just a minority of one. - Sara Bernardo

A concert where fantasy reigns, around the music by two great masters of the 20th century. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella does not seem to have been written 100 years ago and what’s more based on music three times older, from the 18th century. In this key work of neoclassicism, the atmosphere is always humorous and fun intertwined with dance moves, hence its name, after a character from the Italian commedia dell'arte. Children's imagination is revisited by Maurice Ravel in Ma Mère l’Oye, a piece dedicated in 1908 to the children of a couple he was friends with. Originally written for four-hand piano to “evoke the poetry of childhood” from children's tales, it is presented in this programme in the orchestral version that the composer created later, bringing us the fantastic colour of the worlds of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Tom Thumb and other nooks of this place of memory that we all keep.

The closing of the seventh edition of Cultura em Expansão will take place, as usual, in the Grand Auditorium of Teatro Rivoli. In the year in which they celebrate the 25th anniversary of their first album, Blind Zero teamed up with the Orquestra Juvenil da Bonjóia for a very special project curated by Cultura em Expansão. Created in 2011 within the scope of the Música para Todos (Music for All) project (promoted by Porto City Hall and Curso de Música de Silva Monteiro), the Orchestra aims to promote the teaching of music to communities from different schools and neighbourhoods in the city. The project started in the neighbourhoods of Cerco and Viso, but in the meantime it has spread to other territories and today has about 100 children. The violins, violas, cellos, double basses, transverse flutes, saxophones, trumpets, oboes and guitars that make up the Orchestra now join Blind Zero for creating and presenting a collaborative show around the music by the band from Porto.

This will be the first exhibition in Portugal of celebrated Indian artist Nalini Malani (Karachi, Undivided India, 1946). Widely known for her paintings and drawings, the exhibition in Serralves shows an equally significant side of her work, but with which audiences are perhaps less familiar, featuring exclusively her animations produced between the late 1960s and the present day. It was at the end of the 1960s, in an Indian art scene dominated by men, that Nalini Malani emerged as a provocative and feminist voice, equally pioneer in working with artistic media such as experimental cinema, video and installation. In addition to giving women a voice, the artist has always stood out as an artist concerned with social issues, giving prominence to marginalized people through visual stories (animations, in particular) that explore themes such as feminism, violence, racial tension and post-colonialist legacies. The animations brought together at the exhibition in Serralves, made between 1969 and 2020, were grouped under the sign of Utopia (this is, in fact, the title of the oldest work featured here), relating, on the one hand, to the utopian feeling that followed India’s independence and, on the other hand, the disillusionment with the path country had taken, governed by rules dictated by religious orthodoxy. In any case, Malani's work transcends national traumas to deal with globally social injustice. This is the case of the large immersive installation that closes the exhibition, which consists of nine video projections of animations and phrases. Can You Hear Me? although it was based on a violent story that took place in India involving the violent death of a child is an ode to all of those who have no voice. Produced between 2017 and 2020, the installation consists of animations in which images by the artist overlap and fragments of quotes of influential writers such as Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Bertolt Brecht, Veena Das, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Milan Kundera, George Orwell and Wislawa Szymborska. According to the artist, Can You Hear Me? corresponds to the type of animation that she has been focusing on recently, to what she calls notebooks, and which are digitally created on an iPad. Malani has already stated: “When I see or read something that captures my imagination, I have a need to react with a drawing or drawings in motion. Not exactly in its mimetic form but more like a 'Memory Emotion'. I feel like a woman with thoughts and fantasies shooting from the head. Each of them may contain different ideas and may not feel like it is from the same person. Each of these voices in my head needs therefore a different penmanship.”

Roni Horn (New York, 1955) is an American artist who lives between New York and Reykjavik, Iceland. From a very young age she developed a passion for literature and philosophy, before her interest in the visual arts, and led her to see her library as a core engine for herself and her work. The practice of drawing is key and crucial in her oeuvre, and she has also been using other media, such as sculpture, photography and artist’s books. Travelling and immersing in the landscape - especially that of Iceland - are essential in her work, which explores themes such as weather and ecology, along with memory, identity and change. The representation of the outside world is used as an artifice or metaphor to reach an inner and mental space. These eight photographs of the River Thames belong to a series of 80 pictures that Serralves exhibited in her solo exhibition in 2001 and which were acquired at the time for the Collection. In Some Thames (2000-2001), Horn captures moments of the Thames’ flowing surface, getting a set of images that are seemingly abstract and very similar to each other. In fact, they are realistic images and there are infinite differences between them, although imperceptible at first glance. On the one hand, this approach points directly to the experience and perception that each one of us has of the passage of time. On the other hand, water, often represented or evoked in the artist's work, is an allusion to life, the body, sexuality, but also death. As the literature tells us - namely Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad - in the dark waters of the Thames, the bodies of many of those who had violent deaths were thrown, as were many who committed suicide in these waters.

Every year the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) presents the Rising Stars programme, made up by a selection of talented artists nominated by the programmers and artistic directors of the most important concert halls in Europe. These musicians are supported in their professional development and are touring several associated concert halls. Considered already one of the most exciting string quartets of today, the Goldmund Quartett is now performing at Casa da Música in a recital that includes one of the rare instrumental pieces by Pucinni, one of Schubert's most celebrated scores for this type of formation and also the latest string quartet by composer Dobrinka Tabakova.

This Christmas Season, a meditation on Jesus' childhood in 20 movements. Here is the farewell to Pierre-Laurent Aimard who ends his 2020 residency at Casa da Música. The acclaimed pianist is a key figure in the music of our time - with only 16 years old, foreshadowing a promising career, he won the First Prize in the Messiaen Competition, the first of many awards. And it is precisely Messiaen that Aimard revisits again in this recital filled with deep religiosity, in what is one of the most iconic pieces for solo piano by the French composer. The work was written for Yvonne Loriod, student (and future wife) of Messiaen, who would later become teach Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Paris Conservatory.

What would it be like to celebrate Christmas in the Royal Chapel of Louis XIV or in one of the cathedrals of 17th century France? This season was celebrated with great musical abundance, including liturgical works in Latin, as well as ancient folk songs in French - the famous Noëls. Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed a vast work for this time of year, including the O Antiphons, destined to the novena of Advent that prepared the arrival of Christmas, and several oratories that told the story of the Nativity, interspersing the biblical story with devotional texts, and dedicated to each day of the festivities, a little like Bach would do years later in his Christmas Oratorio. The composer reveals in these works a mystical look, particularly sensitive to the supernatural mystery of the Incarnation, announced by the prophets and sung by the angels, but also paying close attention to the fragile humanity of the Son of God, born in the middle of the night, of ice and poverty. A more pleasant and popular vision emerges in his imaginative instrumental arrangements of traditional Noëls, sung by children during this season, both in the snow-covered streets and in the marble galleries of the most luxurious churches, these days lined with silk, velvet and gold.

On Christmas Eve, come and share our “sweet dreams” and embark on a magical journey with Alice (in Wonderland), Peter Pan, Tom Sawyer, Mogli (The Jungle Book) and the wizard of OZ. Our gift to you is the free entry to the Most Beautiful Bookstore in the World, at the time of year when it becomes even more beautiful, so that you can exchange affections with those you cannot have Christmas supper with.

Indy Paiva (Música com Dragõezinhos) and his troupe take the stage of the Fernando Sardoeira Pinto Auditorium (FC Porto Museum) to tell, sing and play an original Christmas tale. In this show of pure musical theatre, the audience also goes on stage and, even without noticing, helps to choose the story and its ending. It is as if a Christmas magic was in the air, carried by sounds and musical notes, arousing good sensations and feelings in a fun environment for children and adults. The event is subject to maximum capacity rules.

No one expects Salvador Sobral to rest on the success of his former projects. This is a new formation, a quintet, that continues to show that the singer is one of the most creative musical personalities of his generation. Alongside musicians with whom he has been collaborating recently is Max Agnas, a young pianist who surprised Salvador during the time he spent in Sweden. Despite being only 23 years old, Max Agnas is one of the great names in Nordic jazz, with a surprisingly mature sound and a language free of unnecessary artifice. This will be the band accompanying Salvador Sobral in the recording of his next album, and here he will unveil some of his new songs, along with older ones included in his previous albums Paris, Lisboa and Excuse me.