Leo Middea

Taquara, then Argentina

Leonardo Middea de Jesus was born on 27 April 1995 in Taquara, in the north of Rio de Janeiro, into a family where music was something relatives did rather than something they put on. His maternal grandparents sang on local live radio broadcasts; his paternal grandparents were known for their vocal harmonies. He taught himself acoustic guitar at 14 and at 17 began formal classical guitar study with the teacher Henrique Pinto. Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Jorge Ben Jor are the names he cites as the ones that shaped what he wanted to do with a song.

The career did not begin in Brazil. At 18 he went to Argentina and worked through a run of more than twenty concerts there, which is where the habit of earning an audience a room at a time started. His debut album, Dois, came out in 2014, when he was 19; A Dança do Mundo followed in 2016. His father died in 2015, and he spent a period afterwards on a silent retreat in India — a gap in the discography that explains the two-year pause between the first two records.

Lisbon, bars and two records in one year

Middea moved to Lisbon in 2017 and started again from the bottom of the circuit, playing streets and bars rather than arriving with a support slot. The move stuck. Two albums appeared in 2020 — Vicentina and Beleza Isolar — the second made under pandemic restrictions, which is audible in how close-miked and domestic parts of it are.

Recognition in Portugal arrived in pieces. In 2022 he opened two concerts for the French singer Sheila at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and performed at the official concert marking the bicentenary of Brazilian independence at the invitation of the Portuguese prime minister. He took Portuguese citizenship after several years of residence and now splits his base between Lisbon and Barcelona, which is where most of the touring is routed from.

Gente, and the Festival da Canção

Gente, his fifth album, was recorded in Amsterdam and released in 2023. It carried a guest appearance from Mallu Magalhães and passed a million streams within a month of release — the first time the numbers caught up with the live work.

The bigger shift came in 2024, when he became the first Brazilian artist to reach the final of Portugal's Festival da Canção, the country's Eurovision selection, with the song Doce Mistério. For a songwriter who had spent seven years playing to rooms that had to be built one by one, a televised national final did in one evening what a tour leg could not: Portuguese audiences now arrive already knowing a song. The same year brought the Prémio Embaixadores and a schedule of more than a hundred concerts.

The scale of the circuit is worth stating plainly, because it is the engine of everything that follows. By 2026 he had played in more than eighteen countries and logged over twenty million Spotify plays, and the live ledger on Songkick alone counts 182 past performances.

An album made in hotel rooms

Notícias de Puglia was released on 26 February 2026, through Agogo Records in Europe and LOCO Records for Brazil and the rest of the world. It is his sixth studio album, though some Portuguese venue billings count it as his seventh. Twelve tracks run a little over 36 minutes — short, deliberately so.

The writing happened across two years of touring, in dressing rooms and hotels, against a tally the venues quote as more than 300 concerts in 16 countries. Breno Viricimo produced it and plays most of the floor himself — guitars, synths, bass and programmed beats — with Lucas Delgado on keyboards, Rubinho Antunes and Antonio Neves on horns, Bruno Marques and Thomas Harres on drums, and Danilo Moura, Kainã do Jeje and Thomas Harres on percussion. It was recorded at Studio Brenissimo in Paris, Louva Deus in Lisbon and Alan Studios in Barcelona, mixed by Guigo Berguer and Tó Brandileone, and mastered by Felipe Tichauer.

The sequencing makes the argument. It opens on Atabaque, named for the hand drum, and closes on the title track; O Baile Começou and Bloco pra Tristeza point straight at carnival, while Praia Vermelha do Sul and Ruota Panoramica sit on the introspective side. The label frames the record as a salute to popular culture and a love letter to Brazil written from Europe, which is a fair description of a set of songs about distance that are mostly built to be danced to.

Where things stand, October 2026

The album had its live debut at the Teatro Tivoli BBVA in Lisbon on 11 March 2026, an 80-minute show at €18 to €30 with guests joining the band, promoted by Cloud Man Tree. The following night, 12 March, he played Sala 2 at Casa da Música in Porto at 21:30 for €22.50. The main tour then opened on 18 March and ran through Spain — including a first show in Apolo's smaller La (2) room in Barcelona on 9 April, with Lua Fernandes supporting — before legs in North America.

The autumn run is the one in progress. He played Parkteatret in Oslo on 28 September and the Teatro-Cine de Torres Vedras on 3 October, a €5 municipal date in the Portuguese town he has returned to repeatedly. Paris came twice at the Alhambra, on 4 and 7 October; Brussels, at Botanique's Museum room on 5 October, sold out. Between those sit Le Ferrailleur in Nantes on 6 October and a four-night Swiss stretch — Sudhaus in Basel, Mühle Hunziken in Rubigen, the Jumeaux Jazz Club in Lausanne and Salzhaus in Winterthur — running 8 to 11 October, then Hiroshima Mon Amour in Turin on 13 October. Forty-three further dates were listed as upcoming at the start of October, with a Madrid show at Sala But already on sale for March 2027.

The venues tell the honest story of where he is: club rooms, mid-sized theatres and jazz clubs across Europe, sold out in some cities and still building in others, with 13,400-odd people tracking his dates for alerts. Portuguese critics have been the warmest — Comunidade Cultura e Arte's line that it is impossible not to count him among the future great musicians of MPB is quoted on his European billings — while the North American dates in May 2026 were played in rooms the size of New York's Mercury Lounge and Public Records.

The band and the room

Live, the record's studio cast is cut down to five. Middea takes vocals and guitar, Lucas Delgado plays keyboards, Breno Viricimo moves from the album's guitars and programming to bass, Rubinho Antunes carries the trumpet line, and Del Groove plays drums. One horn standing in for the record's full section is the main compromise, and it pushes the arrangements towards the rhythm section rather than the brass.

Set lengths are short by touring-songwriter standards: 75 minutes in Torres Vedras, 80 billed at the Tivoli. Most dates on the autumn leg are billed without a support act, with the Barcelona show the exception. Doors and stage times vary by room — Botanique opened at 19:30 for food and drink with the set at 20:30; Apolo at 20:00 for 21:00 — which is a reminder that this remains a club tour rather than a production, routed night after night with little slack between cities.