Catherine Morisseau | pianist & composer

Catherine Morisseau is a Parisian pianist and composer residing in Lisbon for the past two decades.

Student of Colette Maze at the Conservatory of Bagneux, she studied Art History and Conception and Production of Cultural Projects (master’s degree) at the Sorbonne in parallel of studies in piano at the classic music École de Musique de Paris then at the Jazz Hot Club of Lisbon.

In addition to performing, and having gained experience across various musical styles (world music, French chanson, collaboration with video artists and dancers, etc.), composition is what Catherine prioritizes as a pianist, to which she dedicates the essential part of her musical research and concerts.

Catherine released her first solo album, “Myriades” in 2018, now out of print, but available on Bandcamp, in which important figures from the Portuguese musical scene participated (the double bassist Carlos Barretto, members of the Gulbenkian choir, a total of 26 participants who allowed a vast sonic range), an album on which she is the author of the music, texts, lyrics and arrangements.

Melancholic, neoclassical, poetic, intimist and cinematographic are some of the words one could use to define her compositional work.

Another side of Catherine’s work is the piano accompaniment of silent films, also with her own original compositions, being a resident pianist of Cinemateca Portuguesa for more than a decade now.

In that context, she had accompanied silent films, not only at the Portuguese cinematheque, but also at other Portuguese and French film theaters and festivals, with works by authors like Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Ozu Yasujirō, as well as the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès, among others.

The concept of a traveling piano consists of strapping the piano to the top of an open-top van and traveling with it, giving concerts, film concerts, and musical performances. The idea arose from the desire to create another way of experiencing music, more original, poetic, closer to the public, to nature, to the world.

In recent years the traveling piano project has gained wings, travelling and landing in unusual, improbable and surprising places, for concerts in nature, in train stations, warehouses, artists’ studios, on the banks of the Tagus, in gardens, forests or public squares.

Catherine Morisseau has just released her second album, which received funding from Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores. In addition to the acoustic and neoclassical character already present on her first album, it features compositions that blend piano with electronic and electroacoustic sounds, enriched by field recordings, as well as lyrics and a song. This meticulously crafted work, deliberately developed over time and at a slow pace, possesses a literary and poetic, melancholic, dreamlike, and minimalist quality, where nature is the protagonist and inspiration, inviting a different relationship to the world and to time. “Jardins Secretos” (“Secret Gardens”) is an ode to dreams, light, night, and beauty.

This album, “Jardins Secretos” (“Secret Gardens”), is available in digital format on Bandcamp but also on CD, where each numbered cover is illustrated by a unique linocut, handcrafted by herself.

<<Catherine’s music possesses a highly melodic, captivating, and almost magical texture. Whether in her quieter or faster pieces, one perceives a profound commitment and dedication to the structure of each. Sometimes, the way the compositions develop, based on repetition, reveals a certain restraint; at other times, there is emotional grandeur, expansive and open denouements and choruses. The more melodic passages reminded us of certain piano compositions by Nils Frahm; the more mechanical and faster passages, the magnificent style of Lubomyr Melnyk.>>

Tiago Mendes 

(in Comunidade Cultura e Arte, as part of Catherine Morisseau’s performance at the Sintra Festival in June 2023).

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