Her name is Mariana, but it is as MARO that the world begins to know her, especially after having participated in the last edition of the Eurovision festival with Saudade, Saudade, a song dedicated to her grandfather, who died two years ago, with which she managed to a brilliant ninth place. She had previously been in the band of the British Jacob Collier, with whom she toured for a year, ending up leaving to invest on a career in her own name. She already has her first album, homonymous, released in 2018, when it started to become a serious case of popularity on the internet, attracting the attention of people like Quincy Jones, Justin Timberlake, Jessie J or Tracy Chapman. And she is getting ready to release a second album this summer. She started playing the piano at just four years old, influenced by her mother, a music teacher. She would end up taking the eighth grade in the course of this instrument, but sports (soccer and skateboarding) would end up taking her away from music momentarily. The reconciliation took place “around the age of 19”, when listening to the song Cais, by Milton Nascimento. “I realized that nothing in life, other than music, could convey those sensations to me”, she recalls. Almost immediately, she applied to Berklee College, one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, based in Boston, USA, where she completed her songwriting course. At the age of 27, she knows that Eurovision represented “a unique opportunity”, but, as she also admits, she was not dazzled and she only intends to return to her music, “always with her feet firmly on the ground”.
