Ricardo Frota, born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has been inventing music since he was a kid, when he was exploring the forests and beaches of southern Brazil.
Ricardo attended the Berklee College of Music and graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He plays the violin and a wide variety of percussion instruments. Ricardo explores musical expression by creating musical instruments from recycled materials and objects found in nature. As a musician he has always been interested in the music from cultures around the world. His main source of musical inspiration are the sounds from nature.
“When I was young I discovered there is music in everything. I heard the birds singing in the early morning; I noticed their high sounds and the wide variety of tones. There were notes that were not in the conventional twelve chromatic notes of western music; there were smaller tones that I could hear. In the woods, under a tree, I waited for the birds to come and I played with them. I tried to figure out their sounds on my violin. Without realizing it, the birds were my first teachers of microtonal music. In bed at night through the window I could hear the wind blowing and the movement of the waves of the river taking the pebbles and rocks back and forth. For me this was sound, it was rhythm. I was carried away by the experience. It woke within me the awareness of the time and space and sounds of nature. These experiences with the birds and the water, the wind and the rocks were the birth of my deep listening to nature; so now when I play my instruments, it is from this state of awareness that I perform to audiences of all ages – that we live in a world of sound and rhythm.”
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