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The profile · researched 12 October 2026
Marisa Monte's 55-musician gamble: inside Phonica, the tour that ends at Nubank Parque in November
Nearly four decades after a live debut album made her a star in Brazil, Marisa Monte is closing the biggest production of her career — a symphonic reworking of her own catalogue that has sold more than 180,000 tickets and finishes in São Paulo on 14 November 2026.
An opera student who went the other way
Marisa de Azevedo Monte was born in Rio de Janeiro on 1 July 1967, the daughter of an engineer, Carlos Saboia Monte, and Sylvia Marques de Azevedo Monte. She studied singing, piano and drums as a child and began training as an opera singer at 14. At 19 she moved to Italy to study bel canto, singing Brazilian material in clubs while she was there.
She returned to Rio in 1987, and the producer Nelson Motta put together the concert that introduced her. She signed to EMI in 1988, and the live album MM followed in 1989 — a hit both critically and commercially, carrying the single Bem Que Se Quis. That song is still in the set today, decades later, and the pattern of that debut has held ever since: Monte has always been an artist whose recorded work is built out of what happens on stage rather than the other way round.
The catalogue, and who owns it
The run of albums that followed established the commercial scale she still works at. Mais, produced with Arto Lindsay's involvement in 1991, sold a reported 710,000 copies. Verde, Anil, Amarelo, Cor-de-Rosa e Carvão in 1994 reached about 1,050,000, and Barulhinho Bom in 1996 some 750,000. The peak was Memórias, Crônicas e Declarações de Amor in 2000, at roughly two million. By 2011 her worldwide total was put at around ten million albums.
Two details matter more than the numbers. The first is that Monte retains the rights to all of her own compositions, which is why her catalogue has never been repackaged against her wishes and why a project like the current one can be rebuilt from the ground up on her terms. The second is the pace: Infinito Particular in 2006 sold about 500,000, O Que Você Quer Saber de Verdade in 2011 about 260,000, and then nothing new for a decade.
Tribalistas, and the ten-year gap
The side project became the biggest thing she has been involved in. Tribalistas, made with Carlinhos Brown and Arnaldo Antunes in 2002, sold around 3.5 million copies. The trio reconvened in 2017 for a second album, which sold a fraction of that — about 50,000 — but put the three of them back on stage together and back into each other's writing.
Her own studio work resumed with Portas in 2021, her first album in ten years. It was nominated for best MPB album at the Latin Grammys in 2022, and the live record drawn from the tour that followed, Portas (Ao Vivo), was nominated in the same category in 2024. Her collected haul includes four Latin Grammys, eight Brazilian Music Awards, seven MTV Video Music Awards and nine Multishow awards, and she was given Brazil's Order of Cultural Merit in 2014. Rolling Stone Brasil has placed her second only to Elis Regina among Brazilian singers.
Phonica: the band plus fifty-five
Phonica — Marisa Monte & Orquestra Ao Vivo is the first time she has toured with her band and a symphony orchestra at once. The orchestra runs to 55 players, assembled specifically for the project and conducted by André Bachur, who has described it as the most ambitious thing of her career in symphonic form and said the hardest part of the job was deciding what to leave out. The working relationship goes back several years, including a concert for the University of São Paulo's anniversary in 2023 that drew more than 50,000 people.
The tour opened at the Parque Ecológico da Pampulha in Belo Horizonte on 18 October 2025, with Monte on stage from 7.30pm holding an acoustic guitar, and a second night the following evening at 6pm. The programme ran to roughly twenty songs taken from across the whole career. The band is Dadi Carvalho on guitars, Alberto Continentino on bass, Pupillo on drums and Pedrinho da Serrinha on cavaquinho and percussion. The local review of the opening night called it unforgettable and noted how well the orchestral and band arrangements were balanced against each other rather than one smothering the other.
Sua Onda, the one new song
Monte released a single, Sua Onda, in the second week of October 2025, days before the tour opened, and it went straight into the set. She wrote it in 2024 in southern Bahia with Carlinhos Brown and Arnaldo Antunes — a Tribalistas song in all but name — and it was produced and largely played by Gustavo Santaolalla, the Argentine composer who has won two Oscars.
The recording was done in pieces: Santaolalla in Los Angeles, Monte in Rio de Janeiro, and the strings captured by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra in Hungary. Her own description of it was an experience in which technology provided connection, sharing and harmony. Beyond that single there is no new studio album, and none has been announced; Phonica is a rereading of the existing songs, not a launch.
Where it stands in October 2026
By the time the finale was announced in July 2026, the tour had drawn more than 180,000 people across Brazil. It then went to Europe, playing the MEO Arena in Lisbon in September 2026, where the Portuguese review called the production ambitious, playful and theatrical, praised the balance of classical polish against popular feeling, and described the crowd turning into an overwhelming choir. The verdict was that the show was definitive and cohesive.
One date is on sale: 14 November 2026 at Nubank Parque in São Paulo, billed as the last night of Phonica. Tickets went on general sale on 23 July 2026 through Tickets for Fun, after a pre-sale from 21 to 23 July with a 25 per cent discount for Banco do Brasil Visa cardholders. Entry starts at R$125, with the first tier ranging from R$330 in the upper seating to R$620 for the premium pit, and a solidarity ticket available against a donation to partner organisations. Further out, a date at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt on 29 September 2027 is listed, which suggests the orchestral format will outlive its official farewell in some form.
The show, now
A Phonica night is Monte, a four-piece band and 55 orchestral players under André Bachur sharing one stage, with no reported support act. The opening night at Pampulha on 18 October 2025 began at 7.30pm with Monte holding an acoustic guitar and ran to about twenty songs drawn from across the catalogue; the Lisbon arena show in September 2026 took in Vilarejo, Infinito Particular, Maria de Verdade, Ainda Bem, Amor I Love You, Beija Eu, Não Vá Embora, the Tribalistas song Carnavália, the new Sua Onda, and Carinhoso and Panis et Circenses as covers, closing on Bem Que Se Quis. The staging was described by the Portuguese reviewer as ambitious, playful and theatrical, with Monte dressed in a way that recalled Frida Kahlo. The orchestra is used to re-pitch the songs rather than decorate them, and both the Brazilian and Portuguese reviews made the same point about the audience: it sings most of the set back, loudly.
Researched from altamont.pt · em.com.br · otempo.com.br · exame.com · rollingstone.com.br · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · songkick.com
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
Pablo Escobar · CC BY 2.0
Andréa Farias Farias · CC BY-SA 2.0
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