Musician of many companies that “Only” marked Portuguese music

Nborn in Lisbon, in 1950, Jorge Palma began to take music classes at the age of 6 and entered the Conservatory of Music of Lisbon at 10.

Although classes began at the age of 6, Jorge Palma began playing before that at home, where there was a piano.

“It was my toy. I had a good ear and the things I heard on the radio and on the turntable played them on the piano. I was good at it and people noticed, starting with my mother, who had also studied piano. Hence having put me to study at the age of 6”, she shared in an interview, published in 2024 in the ‘site’ Message of Lisbon.

In 1963, he was second in an international piano contest at the Youth Musical Festival in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where he was also distinguished with an Honorable Mention.

Although his career began to be told in 1972, the year he recorded the first single on his own, the music tour began eight years earlier, at age 14, when he abandoned classical music to devote himself to pop-rock.

At the time, what moved him “was girls, party, those things”. In high school, he began “hearing pop rock, starting with [Elvis] Presley, but above all [The] Beatles and [The Rolling] Stones”. “Then I completely dropped out of classical studies, failed Camões High School, in the fourth year, I stopped going to gymnastics, piano lessons,” said Jorge Palma, in an interview with Lusa, in 2022.

After graduating from high school, he entered the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, which he attended for two years, until he gave up.

Before performing on his own behalf, Jorge Palma was part of the Union group, which played in the first edition of the Vilar de Mouros festival in 1971, and the Black Boys.

At the same time, he began to work in composition, orchestration and recording.

In 1972, he recorded “The Nine Billion Names of God”, the first single in his own name, which he received in household appliances.

The title of the theme was taken from a short story by Arthur C. Clarke and inspired by the book “The Awakening of Magicians”, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.

“I really enjoyed this tale, ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’, which is a small tale in which there is a confrontation between mysticism, the spiritualism of Tibetan monks, and the computers of the Western world. And I was able, in a still academic Englishman, to make a song that's not bad. I was then 22 years old”, he told the Public newspaper in 2022.

When he wanted to record “The Nine Billion Names of God” and the B side of the single, “Come, Morpheus”, Jorge Palma went to “the great musician and conductor” Thilo Krasmann, who recorded it, giving studio space to record the model, piano and voice, but “did not belong to any publisher”, he recalled in an interview with Lusa in 2022.

The musician then went “knocking at the door of Arnaldo Trindade, whose director was Carlos Cruz, who heard, found funny and said: ‘We'll pay you for the recording and make the recording’.

The payment came in the form of “a washing machine and a refrigerator”.

“The Arnaldo Trindade [1934-2024] had an appliance business,” Jorge Palma explained, recalling that at that time he had just married the first woman.

Shortly thereafter, in 1973, he was summoned to military service, but decided to leave the country and settle in Denmark.

Before leaving, he auctioned ‘the payment’ he received for the first ‘single’ among friends.

“ I got military leave for a couple of days before I joined the force. When I got that license in Setúbal, I jumped out. Whoever saw me should have thought I was crazy. I arrived at the airport with a ticket to London, and from London I traveled to Copenhagen, read in the official biography of Jorge Palma, “Na Palma da Mão”, by Pedro Teixeira.

In the same book it is said that in Copenhagen, Jorge Palma worked in a hotel where he performed tasks in the maintenance and washing of elevators and cleaning of rooms, among others.

In 1974, after April 25, he returned to Portugal, after April 25, he began to work as an orchestrator and, the following year, he edited the first album, “Like a trip in the palm of his hand”, created at a time when the musician was “very influenced by symphonic rock, Genesis, Yes, etc.”.

“ It was under this influence that I wrote the songs on that album. We are just three instruments: Vítor Mamede on drums, which came from my group Union, Rui Cardoso, blow, flutes and ‘saxes’, and I played everything that was keys, bass, guitars all. We were just three people doing that ‘sleep’, with a very thin, young voice”, he recalled in an interview with Lusa in 2022.

Still in the 1970s, he trades Lisbon for Paris, where he plays on the streets and subway, singing mainly Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Crosby, Stills and Nash and ‘bluegrass’.

After “Like a trip in the palm of the hand” he recorded 13 more original albums, and “each corresponds to a moment” of Jorge Palma’s life. “With whom I was given, with whom I lived, the kind of life I lived, what I heard and read, all this makes every record unique,” Lusa said on the same occasion.

In the 1980s, back in Lisbon, he resumed piano studies at the conservatory, which ended in 1990. Soon after, he recorded “Only”, published in 1991, Jorge Palma’s first career collection, in which he revisits, only to the piano, songs from the previous two decades.

Jorge Palma was 40 years old when he recorded the 15 songs of “Just”, in the old studios of Valentim de Carvalho. “It’s an intimate disc, it’s an intimate environment that actually reflects what happened in the darkness of that huge studio. It is reflected that there is a large delivery, that there is a commitment ", he said in an interview with Lusa in 2016.

For example, “Bairro do Amor” (1977), “In the Land of Dreams” (1980), “My Love Exists” (1982), “Star of the Sea” (1984), “Let Me Laugh” (1985) and “Fragile” (1989).

At the time, “the publisher was not very good for an artist like me who is not a great record salesman,” she recalled. They gave him the chance to record piano and voice, and 30 years later he was still approached by people who praised him.

After “Just”, Jorge Palma spent the rest of the 1990s with the discography he had, advanced with the Palma’s Gang (band with Zé Pedro and Kalu, of the Xutos & Pontapés, and Flak and Alex Cortez dos Rádio Macau), made music for theater, was part of the Rio Grande group, composed for others, until editing a new album of originals, “It is forbidden to smoke”, in 2001.

Followed by “North” (2004), “Night flight” (2007) and “With all due respect” (2011). The latest album, the ultimate, “Life”, was edited in 2023.

In May 2025 the show premiered “3 palms in hand”, in which he performed on stage with his two children, Vicente Palma, born in 1983, and Francisco Palma, born in 1995.

The title of the show began by being the name of Jorge Palma's group and children on the Whatsapp platform, before becoming a song included in the album "Life" and then winning the form of a concert.

Vicente Palma is part of the band that has been accompanying his father for about 20 years.

About the children, Jorge Palma said in an interview with the Lisbon Message in 2024 that “they have very cool voices, they are very tuned: Vicente more piano than guitar, Francisco more guitar than piano. I wrote the ‘Three Palms in the Hand’, which in the studio we three played, each with his guitar, guitars and voice”.

Jorge Palma won the José Afonso Award in 2002 with “Jorge Palma”, and the first edition of the Pedro Osório Award, from the Portuguese Society of Authors, in 2012, with the album “With all due respect”.

In 2020, Jorge Palma received the medal of cultural merit from the Lisbon City Council at the end of a 70-year-old celebration concert, and was awarded by the then President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, as the commander of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.

In April 2026, he was awarded the Career Award of the 8th PLAY – Awards of Portuguese Music, decided by the director of Audiogest, which manages and represents the rights of multinational, national and independent publishers.

At the award ceremony, visibly surprised, with red carnation to the chest, Jorge Palma began by thanking all those who helped him throughout his life, namely “the SNS professionals who do everything with the few means they have”.

On the same occasion, he appealed not to let April 25, 1974 “become a distant memory, an image fading far away”.

“ We must reinvent the spirit of April, always. Freedom, justice, democracy. Guys, get to work, let's make this country something it deserves to be, better. Long live 25 April, live Freedom, live Democracy!", he said.