© Madalena Matoso

SÉRGIO PELÁGIO – Magnetic Stories

From the short story “The Hen” by Clarice Lispector

Centro de Ciência Viva de Lagos
Thu 19 OCT, 10h30

Story-Concert & Workshop / 90' / 6 - 10
Limited to 2 classes
Free entrance

Magnetic Stories is a project by the guitar player and composer Sérgio Pelágio dedicated to composing sound tracks to children’s stories. The result is a storytelling concert for electric guitar and voice, followed by a workshop for the participant audience.
Sérgio Pelágio and Isabel Gaivão perform brief stories live, by recreating the scenarios of the texts they start from and building – in real time and together with the audience – new meanings for the narrated situations. Through music, suggestion and image, children are stimulated to get into the world of storytelling and their characters, creatively unfolding the scenes they listen to.

After each story-concert a workshop is performed, with the aim of working the material presented in a dynamic, plastic and open way. A great importance is given to text musicality and there is a search for elements in the story that suggest sounds and rhythms that have influenced the final result: words, expressions, images.
It is the first time Magnetic Stories work on a short story that hasn’t been written for children. Story by story they have been looking for themes, cultures, periods, processes, different challenges.
This time they were seduced by a hen. She becomes the centre of a common family’s attention and manages to change their home routines. Not for long. After all, she is but a hen. A hen is a Being. Is it?

This is one of the many questions that come out of this philosophical short story, enigmatic and absurd.
The narrative line is surprising. The final is at the same time obvious and unexpected. And it makes you wonder.


Composition, direction and electric guitar: Sérgio Pelágio
Narration: Isabel Gaivão

Sérgio Pelágio – Born in Lisbon, he initiated his musical studies in classic guitar at the age of 12. Later on he discovered jazz and improvised music and played, amongst others, with David Liebman, Andy Sheppard, Graham Haynes, Frank Lacy, Norma Winston, John Abercrombie, Sylvia Cuenca, Mário Franco, Bernardo Sassetti and Mário Laginha, with whom he recorded the CD “Today” (1994, Farol Música Lda).
In 1992, he created the band Idefix and edited Idefix live (1992, Miso Records).
He has worked as a composer for the choreographers Paulo Ribeiro, Paula Massano, João Galante, Teresa Prima, Vera Mantero, Francisco Camacho and Sílvia Real.
In 1998, with Sílvia Real, he founded the Real Pelágio Productions, the duo being responsible for the creation of the Casio Tone, Subtone and Tritone trilogy. Its work has been presented in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungry and USA.
In 2001, he released Sound Tracks for Francisco Camacho and Vera Mantero’s plays 1993-97 (2001, Miso Records).
In 2009 he created the children’s project Magnetic Stories. He is a guitar player in the bassist Mario Franco’s trio, a band with which he recorded the “Our Door” CD (Toap Records 2013). He teaches guitar at the School of Jazz Luís Villas-Boas in Lisbon.

Isabel Gaivão – Born in Lisbon. She studied theatre at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema in Lisbon and at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York. She worked in both television and theatre with several directors, emphasis for JER (Jer ensemble), Luís Castro (Karnart) and Alexandre Lyra Leite (Inestética). She works regularly with children in workshops and dramatic expression classes. She has participated in several projects aimed at a younger audience, having worked namely with João Carneiro, Mário Trigo, Rui Pisco. In 2009 she initiated her collaboration with Sérgio Pelágio in the Magnetic Stories project.