Vera Morais
Vera Morais is a Portuguese singer, improviser and composer based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Primarily influenced by jazz and classical music, her work focuses on the permeability between composition and improvisation and on the instrumental nature of the voice. She’s interested in exploring new expressive dimensions of the voice by stretching its technical possibilities and questioning its traditional role in music.
Her most recent projects include a duo with the tenor saxophonist Hristo Goleminov in which selected poems of authors such as William Carlos Williams come to life in mostly improvised music; and Teresa Costa and Beatriz Lerer Castelo’s “Gesture Within a Frame” (finalist in the Goodmesh Concours 2020), a multidisciplinary project combining photography and contemporary music performance. She’s currently the choir director and arranger of the Queer Choir of Amsterdam, led by artists Shreya de Souza, Mylou Oord and Sarah Naqvi.
Vera studied classical music at Conservatório de Música do Porto (Portugal); and jazz at ESMAE (Portugal) and at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (The Netherlands)