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In March of 2014, Mia spent ten days at the beautiful Estúdio El Rocha in São Paulo, Brazil and recorded an album of her favorite Brazilian songs - some famous, some obscure - all about nature. The album is entitled "Floresta," or Forest in Portuguese, and is being released on Mia's label, City Zen Records, on September 16th of this year. The album features an all Brazilian band: Fabiano do Nascimento on seven-string nylon guitar, Maurício Takara and Rogério Martins on percussion, and Meno del Picchia on bass. Mia and these musicians also contributed to the Red Hot & Bach benefit album [http://www.redhot.org/tag/mia-doi-todd/]
Roots: After many years of being inspired by Brazilian music and culture, Mia traveled to that most beautiful of countries in 2009 to perform a few shows. Through a mutual friend's introduction, Mia met Maurício Takara, the drummer and percussionist for the well-respected groups São Paulo Underground and Hurtmold. Mia and Maurício, who both happen to be half-Japanese, met to rehearse and became good friends immediately. They have played together in both the US and in Brazil and also recently collaborated on a song for the Red Hot + Bach compilation.
Inspired by her encounters in the Southern Hemisphere, Mia began to learn songs by her favorite Brazilian songwriters. Five years later, in collaboration with the brilliant guitarist and arranger, Fabiano do Nascimento, her dream of a Brazilian folk album has been realized. "Floresta" presents the songs unadorned in their raw, confessional purity. They are compositions by some of the great masters of Brazilian music: Caetano Veloso, Joyce, Milton Nascimento, Tom Zé, Tom Jobim, Dorival Caymmi, Candeia, and Dércio Marques. For the band members, most of these songs played in the soundtrack of their childhood, and it was a profound experience to record them. For Mia, singing these songs has been a kind of medicine, a revelation of life's sweetness, sadness, beauty and joy, all joined together in rhythm, melody and word.
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