A composer who has long resisted easy categorization, Pereira began his musical journey at the piano before embracing the acoustic guitar as a gateway into the rhythmic depth of Brazilian music. His early recognition, including being the youngest composer selected for the Brazilian Contemporary Music Biennial in Rio de Janeiro, set the tone for a career defined by curiosity and independence. Following the release of his debut album, later distributed internationally, Pereira relocated to New York, where he studied jazz and built a wide-ranging career as a performer and producer, collaborating with renowned artists from around the globe.

Now based in Northern California, Pereira continues to evolve his artistic voice. With Northern Readings, he brings together a chamber-like ensemble featuring violin, cello, bass, drums, and his own performances on piano and guitar. At the heart of the project is a challenge he has long been drawn to: how to translate the subtle phrasing and syncopation of Brazilian music into a string setting. “I always wanted to create an album with Brazilian-inspired themes using string players,” Pereira explains. “These musicians were willing to take the risk, to step outside traditional roles and fully engage with this language.”

The result is a sound that feels both intimate and expansive. Written as a continuous narrative, Northern Readings unfolds as a musical story, intended to be experienced in sequence. Alongside Pereira’s compositions, each musician contributes a fully improvised solo piece, “moments” captured in a single take, without revision. “That’s how you really hear someone’s voice,” he says. “After they gave themselves to my vision, it felt important to leave space for theirs.”

Recorded with a sense of openness and trust, the album balances structure with spontaneity, composition with risk. It reflects not only Pereira’s technical and artistic range, but also a deeper sense of place, what it means to live between “there and here,” between memory and present experience.

With Northern Readings, Carlos Henrique Pereira offers a work that is both grounded and searching, music that carries the weight of tradition while remaining open to transformation. It is a quiet, confident statement from an artist still in motion.