Biography

Lulla Oliveira is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and guitarist.

His first intense contact with music happened at the age of 13, when he had a “nearly mystical experience” while watching Hermesto Pascoal performing live. Lulla Oliveira decided right there and then that he had to be a musician, and that he would dedicate himself to composing that kind of music: Brazilian, free and contemporary.

During that same year, 1979, Lulla started to study classical and popular guitar – as well as anything else that fell into his hands, from Hermesto Pascoal to Boulez, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, from Miles Davis to Brazilian folk.

At the age of 17, Lulla moved from Rio de Janeiro to Juiz de Fora (MG), where he continued studying classical guitar, composition and arrangement at the Pro-Music School. Two years later, Lulla Oliveira traveled to Salvador (BA) for the first time in order to research the work and sculpture-instruments of Anton Wakter Smeak’s, the Swiss composer. During this period, he started to record and write scores for Candomblé’s traditional rhythms and melodies through hands-on researches performed at traditional Candomblé’s temples in Bahia.

In 1989, Lulla moved to São Paulo, where he started to work as a professional musician for numerous bands and studios. In 1992, he starts to study aesthetics and classical composition at the Institute for Advanced Studies at São Paulo’s University, with lessons taught by the German professor, composer and musician Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, previously a professor for Tom Jobim and Paulo Moura, among others.

Throughout these years, Lulla Oliveira furthered his researches, registering and exploring scores of Afro-Brazilian music and its origins, as well as the influences of the African musical influences in the Americas, especially American Jazz and Blues. In 2006, Lulla studied jazz composition and improvisation, with specialization in guitars, with the professor and instrumentalist Marcos Amorim.

Using this vast experience and materials, Lulla Oliveira developed his own natural style whilst creating a sound that is both universal as well as profoundly Brazilian. His music is committed to creativity and reaches a fusion of afro-brazilian rhythms and jazz influenced melodies.

Due to the series of work including the album "Makumba de Butique Sonora" ("Afro-Brazilian Sonorous Forge"), the release of the songbook "Candomblé's Rhythms" and the live DVD recorded during the concert held at Teatro Rival Petrobras, in Rio de Janeiro, Lulla Oliveira received, in 2008, montion of congratulations for being a prominent representative of Afro-Brazilian culture at Rio de Janeiro's Councilors Chamber.