it Was the most important technical sound of Portuguese music. It was much more than that. Was responsible for listening to Amália as we hear it on the disks of the studio, was the one whose talent allowed to preserve unscathed the genius of Carlos Paredes, was the one who persuaded Alfredo Marceneiro to write the most famous album of the legendary singer, The Fabulous Marceneiro (1961). He did more: he recorded the first steps of the Portuguese rock (Freshmen of the Song, in 1960, Daniel Bacelar, and The Shells, the first log record of the official gender), but also Carlos do Carmo, Simone de Oliveira, António Calvário, Sheiks, Quarteto 1111, Tantra, Rui Veloso, or Marco Paulo. Hugo Ribeiro, born in 1925 in Vila Real de Santo António, a man of work done, the work of a lifetime, in the record company Valentim de Carvalho, died Saturday, in Lisbon, at the age of 91, reports Lusa.
Being an "amateur", Hugo Ribeiro was a master in the invention of solutions that allow to capture the musicians who recorded, not in the way most faithful as possible, but in the way most suitable to the temper of her voice, artistic. It was using your ear as the magnificent and to his wisdom technique, but also the a sagacity unmatched in the conduct of the musicians in the studio. Are famous stories of how he deceived Amalia, putting him to sing to a microphone is switched off while, in the back of the room, another, connected, sensed the voice in all its amplitude. Or how it took a Carpenter to overcome their discomfort with the sterile environment of the studio suggesting that sing with a blindfold on the eyes.
When he arrived in Lisbon, at 18 years old, did not think to make music your professional future. Fell in love-the weather and I wondered if working in a scientific area attached to it. However, a cousin, next of Valentim de Carvalho, founder of the historical company of Portuguese music, would you forward it in the right direction. Instead of the weather, the work behind the bar of the house situated at Rua Nova do Almada, at Chiado, where you took care, for example, the sale of sheet music. When Valentim de Carvalho expanded, passing also to ensure the whole process of recording, Hugo Ribeiro has accompanied the change. Worked in the living room recordings in their own Rua Nova do Almada, and accompanied the move to the Club Estefânia, where he had to deal with the noise of the peacocks of the garden of the Hospital da Estefânia, and with the noise of the billiard room on the floor above. Then went to the Teatro Taborda, where the concerns were a floor threatening to collapse, and the cries of varinas, and of the traffic on the outside. In 1963, when it was opened the state of the art studio, Paço d’arcos, inspired in the famous Abbey Road studios where the Beatles recorded their masterpiece, Hugo Ribeiro began to have to worry about "only" with the best way to record the various musicians that came through the room.
Hugo Ribeiro was a deep connoisseur of the most diverse musical areas: he was a taste for opera, who gave birth to a friendship with the surgeon, Francisco Pulido Valente, client of the shop in the Chiado of the Valentim de Carvalho, toured the country with the great friend of Rui Valentim de Carvalho, nephew of the founder of the label, to record folk dancing, loved the fado and I could see the rock’n’roll. Animated by a spirit of practical and enlightened – "it has the passion to find solutions, because he loves the music that is doing", he said to the PUBLIC in 2014 David Ferreira, during three decades, the man at the helm of EMI-Valentim de Carvalho – and a keen awareness that not only the technical issues were determinants to achieve the objectives pursued in the recordings. "When I was someone recording in the studio, I had to know him well to know as I had to deal with it", it counted two years ago to the PUBLIC. Hence, on that night in Teatro Tabord a, have approximated to that of Alfredo Marceneiro and suggested that the singer used the handkerchief that he brought always to the neck as a sale, the form of a Carpenter imagine in the houses of fado where your voice flowing naturally. Hence the trick of the microphone is switched off with Amália (let us thank him, therefore, records historical such as Bust or Voice), or the spring stuck in the nose of Carlos Paredes, to the breathing serious guitarist does not overlap the sound of your guitar (and are born then the brilliant Portuguese Guitar and Perpetual Motion).
Man warm-hearted, tireless storyteller, Hugo Ribeiro has left a profound mark on all the musicians with whom it is crossed, regardless of generational differences. "In a normal country, the Hugo could earn a living at universities, sharing with students, artists, and sound technicians for them to learn from their experience", argued David Ferreira. Amalia, for whom he had great admiration, gave him the highest of compliments: "I’ve recorded in many countries. The italians recorded me well, but Hugo Ribeiro, Valentim de Carvalho, is that writes that I think is my voice, that I hear".
unconditional Lover of his craft, Hugo Ribeiro continued to travel weekly up to Paço d’arcos to take the pulse of the work there continues to make and to visit the archives where they are saved the more than four thousand coils that comprise the work of his life, heritage that is irreplaceable in Portuguese music.
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