ARMANDO TAVARES BELO

Born: November 11th, 1911, Faro (Portugal)

Died: December 13th, 1993, Cascais (Portugal)

Nationality: Portuguese

Below, a medium-length article detailing the life and works of Armando Tavares Belo can be found. Hopefully, in due course, it can be extended to a full-fledged biography

BIOGRAPHY

Armando Tavares Belo hails from the most southern region of Portugal, the Algarve, where he was born in Faro in 1911. Apart from an elementary piano course in his early youth, Tavares Belo was an autodidact who never went to conservatory. He possessed the gift to be able to reproduce on the piano any given melody that he had heard. At seventeen, he started working as a professional pianist in Café Montanha in Faro. In 1933, meanwhile having moved in Lisbon, he was incorporated in the so-called Orquestra Portugal. Five years later, together with Álvaro Silva, he founded a band of his own, the Orquestra Toseli, of which he was the conductor until 1946.

In that year, Tavares Belo was asked to become musical director of the national radio orchestra, the Orquestra de Variedades da Emissora Nácional, later renamed Orquestra Ligeira da Radiodifusão Portuguesa. In the 1950s and 1960s, he remained closely connected to the national broadcaster RTP as an arranger and conductor, accompanying countless radio and TV shows, such as the Olimpíadas da Canção, a popular music contest in which even Amália Rodrigues once participated. He was musical director of two Portuguese Eurovision preliminaries (see below). Moreover, he stood at the cradle of the Orquestra Swing, a very innovative ensemble at that time which specialized in jazz repertoire and was hugely successful in the 1950s.

Tavares Belo was one of Portugal’s most sought-after composers in the era 1940-1960. He wrote revue songs for Beatriz Costa, Laura Alves, and many others. Fados of his hand, often with lyrics by Silva Tavares or Aníbal Nazaré, were sung by Simone de Oliveira, Maria de Lurdes Resende, and Maximiano de Sousa. Moreover, he penned the soundtracks for two Henrique Campos movie pictures from 1953, ‘Rosa de Alfama’ and ‘Duas causas’. In classical music, he composed two concertos for piano and orchestra.

In December 1983, a tribute concert was held in honour of Tavares Belo in the São Luis theatre in Lisbon. He died in 1993 in a hospital in Cascais, near Lisbon, aged 82.

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

In 1964, Portugal participated in the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time. The RTP organized a televised show, Grande Prémio TV da Canção, to determine which song would represent the country in Copenhagen that year. Armando Tavares Belo was the musical director of this programme and, as such, he conducted all twelve entries, performed by 6 artists; António Calvário, Artur Garcia, Madalena Iglésias, Simone de Oliveira, Gina Maria, and Guilherme Kjölner. Tavares Belo himself – in collaboration with co-composer Jaime Filipe and lyricist Artur Ribeiro – had written one of the songs, the rather patriotic “Para cantar Portugal”, which was performed by António Calvário. 

In the end, one of the other efforts performed by Calvário, ‘Oração’, a melodious prayer put to music, was chosen as the winner. Tavares Belo, however, did not accompany Calvário to the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen. Instead, the Portuguese debut was conducted by the Danish musical director of the contest, Kai Mortensen. Calvário was not awarded a single point and came last, together with three other hapless artists.

In 1966, Tavares Belo composed his second and last entry for the Grande Prémio, again together with Jaime Filipe, ‘Caminhos perdidos’; interpreted by Madalena Iglésias, it came 6th in a field of 8 participating songs. Belo did not get to conduct the song himself, though, because the orchestra for that edition of the pre-selection was conducted by Jorge Costa Pinto.

One year later, in 1967, Tavares Belo was commissioned for the second time to be musical director of the Portuguese preliminaries. He conducted all twelve songs in competition, in which the participating artists were Rui Malhoa, Valério Silva, Duo Ouro Negro, Artur Garcia, Marco Paulo, Maria de Lurdes Resende, Eduardo Nascimento, and, once again, António Calvário. The winning song was the up-tempo ‘O vento mudou’ by Eduardo Nascimento, arranged by Joaquim Luís Gomes. 

Subsequently, Tavares Belo made his only appearance in the Eurovision Song Contest finals, conducting ‘O vento mudou’ for Nascimento in Vienna’s Hofburg. Portugal came 12th (3 points) in a field of 17 countries.

Tavares Belo (far right) with Eduardo Nascimento (second from left) and 3 other Portuguese delegates on their way to the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna (1967)

OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT ARMANDO TAVARES BELO

So far, we have not gathered memories of other artists who worked with Armando Tavares Belo.

EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR

1967 Vienna

Country – Portugal

Song title – "O vento mudou"

Rendition – Eduardo Nascimento

Lyrics – João Magelhães Pereira 

Composition – Nuno Nazareth Fernandes

Studio arrangement – Joaquim Luís Gomes

(studio orchestra conducted by Joaquim Luís Gomes)

Live orchestration – Joaquim Luís Gomes

Conductor – Armando Tavares Belo

Score – 12th place (3 votes)

SOURCES & LINKS

• A posthumous biography of Armando Tavares Belo, written by his niece Prof. Dr. Maria Armanda Tavares Belo, “Maestro Tavares Belo: dávida total à música” (Lisbon, 1995)
• The best source on Portugal’s involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest, the website Festivais da Canção