Her father was an engineer who also worked with the Portela samba school he helped ignite her passion for music. Until then Monte had been surrounded by the boundless splendors of Rio, where she was born on July 1, 1967. Videos were shot for all the songs-“small musical documentaries that show the process of recording,” says Monte, “but also the garden, the sea, the sky, everything that was outside during the confinement, when we all had very limited physical space in which to live.” Musicians from New York, Spain, and Portugal made guest contributions through Zoom.
In November 2020, when COVID restrictions began to ease, she started recording with her musicians in the studio, using full safety precautions. Of the sensual title track, Monte explains: “Doors are very symbolic elements they talk about opportunities, changes, transformations, so I wanted to offer a sense of passage.” “I wanted to offer something that could heal and help people to cross this moment, to not be that depressed and sad,” she says. While staying at home in Rio with her husband, son, and daughter, Monte planned Portas, an album filled with soft, comforting sounds and messages of hope.
Her newest album sprang out of the seemingly barren confinement imposed by the pandemic. Female singers before my generation didn’t compose as much as now it’s an interesting change in the way women occupy space on the musical scenery in Brazil, and it reflects our presence in society as well.” “I’m glad to represent all my Brazilian sisters,” she says, “and to be opening doors for them outside Brazil. Past recipients include Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, and several icons of Brazil (Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, and Vinicius de Moraes) Monte is her country’s first female honoree. On October 22, Monte was in Sanremo, Italy to collect the prestigious Tenco Award for lifetime achievement in songwriting. Sung in Spanish and Portuguese, it talks about “the flow of life,” Monte says, “and how things are always in a dynamic movement, changing all the time.” They composed the song while riding together on a sailboat in Sardinia. Recently Sony Music also released the single “Vento Sardo” (Sardinian Wind), written and sung by Monte and Jorge Drexler, the Oscar-winning Uruguayan singer-songwriter. She has collaborated with a wide array of vanguard artists, including Seu Jorge, David Byrne, Philip Glass, Caetano Veloso, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, and Laurie Anderson. Monte’s voice has the lilt and delicacy of bossa nova, but her singing, like her songwriting, is driven by a fierce intelligence, a curiosity about the human condition, and a passion for risks.