This is how this album was born: from an unlikely and inevitable encounter between two artistic languages, two worlds, and two sensibilities that, together, create a new way of expressing fado. After the homonymous EP that marked the beginning of this remarkable collaboration, LINA_ and Marco Mezquida now present the complete album O Fado, a deeper journey through this emotional geography where tradition and invention embrace each other intimately. It features 12 songs — including originals, revisitations, and discoveries — where fado is heard in new forms, rhythms and profound silences.

LINA_, with roots in opera and a classical training, fell in love early on with fado houses — a place of belonging and risk, where her voice found freedom. She recorded for Sony under the name Carolina, and later, as LINA_, she established herself internationally with the LINA_Raül Refree project, unanimously acclaimed by national and international critics. With Fado Camões, released in 2024, she reached No. 1 on the main European world music charts and was distinguished by German critics as the author of the Best Album of the Year in the World Music category. She is, without a doubt, one of the great interpreters of our time.

But LINA_ refuses to stand still. And it is from this creative impulse, which is genuine and urgent, that this new album is born. “Marco brought a great lightness to my music”, she says. "The piano is an instrument that has always accompanied me, but in him there is something different — it's as if it were an extension of his body. And the way he approaches it makes me float. I feel free and deeply heard.”

Marco Mezquida, born in Menorca in 1987, is today one of the most versatile figures in contemporary Iberian music. A graduate of ESMUC in Barcelona, he is a composer, improviser, prolific collaborator, and regular presence on the world's most demanding stages. With over 60 albums recorded (20 as leader), an impressive capacity for improvisation, and total dedication to music, Mezquida is a pianist who breathes through his fingers. Among his many accolades are the Jury and Audience Awards at the BMW Welt Jazz Awards (Munich) and three Premis Alícia from the Catalan Academy, including the International Career Award in 2023.

“I always wanted to be a singer,” says Marco. “I sing with the piano. LINA_ has a voice that touches me deeply, a voice that comes from the ground, that carries truth. Working with her is like being on stage with an artist who is also a poetic instrument — generous, vibrant, and intense. Singing with her, even without words, is a rare privilege.”

O Fado brings together compositions by LINA_, who thus affirms another side of her versatile artistic personality, poems by Florbela Espanca and Miguel Torga, but also by Álvaro Duarte Simões, Vitorino Salomé, Sueli Costa, and Luís de Andrade. Among the themes that reflect this present, and a new way of feeling is, for example, “Não é fácil o Amor”, a heartfelt poem by Luís de Andrade with music by João Vieira (a pseudonym of Janita Salomé) that finds a deep and breathtaking emotional resonance in LINA_'s voice. There are, of course, revisited classics such as “Fado da Defesa”, a true classic that gained immortality in a historic interpretation by Maria Teresa de Noronha and in which LINA_ now discovers, in Marco Mezquida's surprising arrangement, a new light.

There are more timeless classics on this album, such as “Senhora do Almortão” and even “Lisboa dos Manjericos”, a march in its original version sung by the acclaimed Portuguese fado singer Amália Rodrigues. The repertoire also includes songs in Spanish, such as “No volveré” and “El Rosario de mi Madre”, showing that fado is, after all, a universal emotion that transcends the language of Camões and goes as far as the artists' will dictates.

In this album, the piano and the voice do not compete - they listen to each other, creating complicity. They seek each other and complement each other. And, in the end, they create a place where fado breathes with other colors, other words, other pauses. A place that could only exist from this encounter, as unique as its protagonists are.

In 2025, this project will be brought to life on stage in a highly anticipated international tour. Until then, this album is your map and future memory.