São Paulo pays homage to João Carlos Martins, “the representative of music on Earth”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – He is a representative of music on Earth”. This is how theater director Jorge Takla defines the maestro and pianist João Carlos Martins, who, at the age of 80, has dedicated more than 70 years to art and has become one of the main references of classical music in the world.

The exhibition “Joao Carlos Martins: 80 Years of Music” in the Fiesp Cultural Center, which opens its doors this Wednesday in São Paulo, scrutinizes the life, work, and essence of the musician, whose career has been marked by  his overcoming countless challenges.

Of his 80 years of life, Martins (São Paulo, 1940) dedicated 72 to the piano and the stage, despite the countless ups and downs that accompanied his career, including a neurological problem, an accident in 1965 that limited the movements of his hands and led to twenty-four surgeries.

With almost a thousand square meters, the exhibition invites the public to immerse themselves in the mind and soul of the pianist, who shares with viewers some of his most intimate memories, as well as his fears, ambitions, and longings.

“The crowd crowding the chairs knows nothing, neither the musicians nor the press. Among the thousand or so people present in the theater, I am the only one who knows that everything ends that night,” Martins confesses to the audience as he recounts his last performance as a pianist, on June 25, 1998, his 58th birthday.

Hours earlier, he had confirmed the operation that would sever the nerve in his right hand and put an end to his masterful career at the piano.

Instead of retiring, the artist returned to starring on stage, this time as a teacher, although he recalls that “somehow he always managed to return to the piano.”

“Me and music are intertwined for life. The two times I had to stay away from music was due to my health, but it never left my heart,” he says with emotion, after visiting for the first time the exhibition that pays tribute to him.

For the artistic director and curator of the exhibition, it was precisely music that “saved” Martins, whom Takla thanks for both his “artistic essence” and his work of “ennobling the soul.”

“He needs music as much as music needs him to stay alive,” he assures.

The debilitated childhood of a shy child prodigy, the successful debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall at age 21, the dozens of medical procedures and operations or the consecration as a pianist – and later as a conductor – are some of the key moments that lead the visitor through a true musical journey.

While exploring the corridors, the public finds in every corner a different sensory experience, such as an “exclusive 3D piano concert” through a hologram, a “live” presentation of an orchestra conducted by the maestro or, even more, a ballet where a couple of dancers simulates the artist’s relationship with music.

It also reveals the enormous influence of Johann Sebastian Bach in the life and work of Martins, considered by international critics as one of the greatest interpreters of the German composer in the 20th century.

“I can’t describe in words his role in my life, but I think I could describe it in the way I played Bach,” summarizes the pianist.

For the curator of the exhibition, which can be seen until September 26, exhibiting the “grit, wounds, setbacks and overcoming” of a person “as exceptional” as Martins is “a breath of hope” that comes at a time marked by uncertainty.

In times of pandemic, “it is fantastic that the exhibition can exist at this time. It is a breath of hope, of life,” he concludes.