Portuguese pianist Joana Gama works on Friday in Lisbon to play the album “A mind in the heart”, which she recorded at the invitation of Serbian composer Ivan Vukosavljević, in an unprecedented partnership that was born from a distance.
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20/10/2026
by
Lusa
ANDan interview with the agency Lusa, Joana Gama explains that this collaboration emerged more than a year ago when Ivan Vukosavljević, a Serbian musician based in The Hague, contacted her to tell her that she was “the person with the right sensitivity to record the music” that he was composing for piano.
The two pianists did not know each other; it was through the digital platforms that Ivan Vukosavljević came to his work, to the projects around Erik Satie, John Cage or Hans Otte, and realized that they would have artistic affinities, particularly within the slowest and most contemplative music.
“Ivan already had some composite pieces and some ‘demos’ he had recorded, in the background, to give an idea of what it would be. Then he finished composing the pieces and so the music is completely his. But then we had an intense process of preparing the recording that was made all the way away ", Joana Gama told the agency Lusa.
The pianist would not meet Ivan Vukosavljević until the recording of the album, with eight compositions, in September 2025 in a church in the Netherlands.
“ He had an intuition that I was the right person, I also had an intuition to accept this invitation”, even because “it arrived at a time that I wasn’t even thinking about a next piano project”, Joana Gama recalled.
“Arcueil”, 2019, was Joana Gama’s latest solo album. After that he was focused on the dissemination and interpretation of Hans Otte's music, a trilogy of shows for the younger, of music and nature, and also on the composition for the film "Kora", by Cláudia Varejão.
“A mind in the heart” was edited in January this year, has already had two presentations in the Netherlands and Spain, and Joana Gama has already prepared a tour for the coming months, in Portugal and abroad, at least until May 2027. It is a long-term project as it did, for example, with the publication of the work of German composer Hans Otte and French composer Erik Satie.
Ivan Vukosavljević explains that “A mind in the heart” is “the most poetic way to describe humility and love that is born of humility. For what better describes humility than a mind that is drawn from the heights of the will itself to the depths of the heart?”.
Joana Gama adds that “it is not to make the heart rational, but to make the mind more loving.”.
“ I have also been looking for (...) to play music that is more than music, that does me good and that I feel it can have a beneficial effect of calming people who listen”, involving, in particular, nature, stressed.
“It’s a context that makes me feel good and that I feel that, however much you talk about it, it’s never enough. If I can, naturally my work will go there. There are other areas that fascinate me, namely sleep, which I hope to come to work soon. Sleep is a very important theme in life. The sleep, the dream. And it is very neglected”, he said.
Joana Gama's concert on Friday at the Belém Cultural Centre in Lisbon will be preceded by a conversation with Ivan Vukosavljević about the artistic collaboration that resulted in “A mind in the heart”.
Alongside the recitals with this album, Joana Gama will be in November on the island Graciosa, in the Azores, for the Terra Incognita initiative, in which she will develop an artistic residence and a sonorized track (‘audiowalk’) with the Philharmonic Recreio dos Artistas.