Portuguese composer and performer Sílvia Mendonça is interested in sound as a vehicle for social and individual transformation.
Their latest E.P. “Rest” features three tracks of rich, vibrant tones and flourishing soundscapes that are colorful, inspiring and warm.
I caught up with Silvia to talk about their early musical experiences, how they started composing and the making of the new E.P.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you as a kid?
Silvia-My passion for music did not stem from a specific song, but rather from a musical instrument. A toy piano that my cousin would bring to Portugal every time he returned from Belgium for the summer holidays. We were very young, just five or six years old, and that instrument signified his return and the holidays we would spend together in harmony. My entire professional career in music is inseparable from this instrument and the impact it still has on me today.
CMM-What artist or band did you enjoy the most?
Silvia-I really like John Cage and what he represents in the musical landscape of the 20th century. There are musicians and artists, and I think of him as an artist, whose art is extremely plastic and manages to touch on various expressions, various universes, and eras. It is truly a work that results from thinking with an incomparable capacity for seduction.
CMM-How did you start writing songs and developing your own sound?
Silvia-The desire to compose almost always arises in association with images, and whenever I watch a film, I feel like working with sounds. I remember studying musical composition when I was around twenty years old, and from then on, I never stopped writing my own music. But I think it was minimalist music that first drew my attention to ‘form’ and ‘gestalt’ in music.
CMM-You recently released a record called “Rest”. What was the writing and recording process like for those and were there any particular pieces of gear you used to get the sound you were looking for?
Silvia-This music is associated with my artistic research, where I had already decided to work with sound with non-musicians. And as this whole process culminated in the use of the voice as an instrument of sound exploration, an opportunity arose to create a project for a specific space, and the idea for this music came almost instantly. When visiting the space, the grain silos located in Caldas da Rainha with two visual artists I was working with, we began experimenting with voices at different points in the space. As is characteristic of these places, the entire horizontal storage area is converted into vertical storage, and the effect was incredible. We made a series of recordings with our voices using only a microphone placed in the centre of the space, and I went home to work on these recordings, and so the music emerges from this experience.
CMM-If you could do a score for any film director, who would it be and what would the film be about?
Silvia-There are many ways to think about music for cinema. Nowadays, I identify more with improvised music, and perhaps setting a film to music live would be the format that suits me best. So, the choice is not easy, but I would choose the filmmaker André Gil Mata for a film about human memory, which is a theme that interests me.
CMM-Anything coming up?
Silvia-I have several projects underway. I am working on a series of compositions for piano solo about silence, where I explore a random creative process, which also unfolds in a workshop with academic and non-academic communities. I am writing a work that is a trilogy, ‘Requiem ao vermelho’ (Requiem to Red), which has been in progress since September 2025 and is also linked to my return to the visual arts (drawing and painting). I am collaborating on an operetta for children, ‘Os quatro Elementos’ (The Four Elements), which will be performed by elderly people, and I am also writing for the harp – Spring mantras, where I also introduce a pre-recorded electronic component, as part of a project with several musicians working around the world in musical thanatology. So, there are many new things on the way.
