Brazilian artist and teacher Ana Pê is a brand new discovery of mine, having recently released a fantastic new record called Músicas para Brincar Ventar e Voar! (which translates as Songs to Play, Blow and Fly!). After listening to and reviewing the album, it’s clear that it’s a really rare type of record, including a sense of effortless warmth that seems to run through everything that Ana touches. Find out more about Ana and her career as an educator and as a musician below!

By Jane Howkins

How has 2026 been for you so far?

2026 has been a very intense year for me, full of work, learning and discoveries. I am currently doing my PhD in Performing Arts, with research that explores issues related to mental health and the possibilities of re-signifying conflicts and experiences through art. At the same time, I am going through the process of bringing a musical project that means a great deal to me into the world.

I released Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! in March, and one of the biggest discoveries this year has been realising that finishing an album is only part of the journey. There is another huge task that comes after it: making sure these songs actually reach people. As an independent artist, I have been learning a lot about this process as it unfolds. I have been looking for ways for the album to reach children, families, educators and also people who connect with the themes it addresses.

I think 2026 has been, above all, a year of movement and transformation. I have been researching, writing, creating and learning how to build new paths for my artistic work. Not everything happens at the speed we would like, but some doors are starting to open (including internationally), and it has been very beautiful to see the album beginning to travel and reach places I never imagined when I created it.

2. You released a new album, Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! What can you tell our readers about it, and how has the reception been?

The first response to this work actually came before the album was released, from my own students. The songs from Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! are part of a stage performance that was already presented at school, and the response from the teenagers was incredible. In fact, they were the ones who moved me and made me realise this project needed to go further and reach other people.

Since then, something that has deeply moved me is realising that those who listen to the album recognise both its purpose and its musical quality. I had the privilege of working with well-known musicians from the Brazilian scene, artists I deeply admire, and I feel very honoured that they embraced this project and everything it represents.

Now, my biggest wish is to make these songs reach as many people as possible. Although the album was born in Brazil and carries a strong sense of our identity, it speaks about issues that go beyond borders: mental health, self-esteem, respect for one’s own body, diversity, the environment, the freedom to express feelings, loss and affection. These are themes that cross childhood and adolescence in different parts of the world.

Perhaps that is exactly what I want most from this work: for these songs to travel and find children, teenagers, families and educators in very different places from where they were created.

One of the main tracks on the album, Meu Corpo, Meu Templo Sagrado (My Body, My Sacred Temple), is a Brazilian children’s rock song. It’s an interesting concept – can you tell us more about it?

The idea for My Body, My Sacred Temple came from the realisation that there are still many taboos surrounding the body, even within schools. For me, the body is our home – it is where we live. The only certainty we have is that we are born, grow and live in a body. And I believe that the earlier we develop this awareness, the more we learn to understand ourselves and others. Our thoughts, emotions, limits and affections all pass through the body. That is why I think it is so important for children and teenagers to learn to recognise it, respect it and understand that they have the right to set boundaries.

As a teacher, over the years I have encountered different situations related to childhood abuse, and this is an issue that deeply concerns me. There is also a silence that often surrounds these experiences. Children and teenagers may struggle to understand what happened, find words to speak about it or even realise that they have the right to say no and ask for help. So the song also comes from a desire to contribute to the prevention of child abuse, but not through fear. I wanted to talk about care, autonomy, awareness and respect for one’s own body, and at the same time about the right to have a voice.

And that is where rock takes on a very special meaning. It has strength, a pulse and energy. In a way, it breaks that silence: it brings voice, it brings words and it brings the possibility of speaking. I wanted the song to carry that as well – not being afraid to speak. Instead of turning the body into something we are afraid or ashamed to talk about, the song seeks to celebrate it as life – this life that belongs to us, that deserves to be known, respected and protected.

You also have a career as a teacher. How do you manage to balance that with your musical calling?

For me, these two things have never been completely separate. I was an extremely shy child, but there was something curious: every time I got into my father’s small car and sat in the back seat, I would start singing. It was completely instinctive. Music appeared very early in my life as a place where I could express myself. Later, theatre became deeply transformative for me. It was through theatre that I began discovering other possibilities of expression and creation, and this experience also shaped the professional path I chose.

Because of that, the classroom has never been just a space for transmitting knowledge. It is a space for encounter, exchange, experimentation and creation. There is a very intense exchange with my students, and the experiences that affect me in this encounter find material form in art. This is a constant movement in my trajectory: what moves me transforms and becomes embodied in my artistic creation.

In the case of Songs to Play, Blow and Fly!, the songs were created before the dramaturgy, but it was through this exchange with teenagers that they gained new meanings, became a stage performance and later became an album. So I would not say I have a musical career parallel to my teaching career. One feeds the other. My role as a teacher is also a place of creation.

What is happening now is a new movement for me. With the release of the album, I am beginning to explore the music world beyond the space where this work was born. I am learning how this world works, meeting people, building new connections and discovering how far these songs can go. It is a path I am still building, and perhaps that is exactly what makes it so interesting to me right now.

Do you plan to release more singles in the near future?

Yes, there are other songs. I have several pieces already written that do not belong to the children’s universe and that also came from experiences I have lived. As I said before, there is this very strong movement in my creative process: the experiences that affect me find a material form in art. And I do have the desire, at some point, to record and release these songs.

But I think there is a time for each project. Right now, my main focus is developing the dramaturgy of Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! and bringing this universe to the stage. The songs were already part of a performance before, but now I want to rethink the work based on everything that has happened since then and create a new stage experience for the album.

At the same time, I am doing my PhD in Performing Arts, which requires a great deal of dedication. So for now, I need to make choices – I cannot do everything at once. The other songs are with me and will certainly have their moment, but right now I want to focus my energy on my PhD and on making Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! grow, circulate and return to the stage.

You are from Rio de Janeiro. What is the music scene like in the city?

I think one of the words that best defines Rio de Janeiro’s music scene is plurality. It is a city where many traditions, languages, generations and ways of making music co-exist. And I can also speak about this through the people who are part of this album.

Daniela Spielmann, for example, is an extraordinary saxophonist and a very dear friend. She is always introducing me to new things, new musicians and new sounds, and she was one of the people who most encouraged me to move forward with this project. Charles Gavin is another musician I deeply admire, and he embraced the album in a very generous way. I am also very happy to have Beatriz Rabello, a singer who builds her own artistic path while maintaining a beautiful musical relationship with her father (Paulinho da Viola), with whom she also performs.

This plurality is also present in the album’s sound itself. Luiz Brasil, who produced the record, worked this diversity with me in a very thoughtful way. The album moves through very different universes – from traditional Brazilian Marchinhas to rock, incorporating other references and sounds along the way. Luiz himself plays on the album and brought musicians who added very unique colours to the arrangements, such as Lon Bové with the Hawaiian guitar, and Leonardo Reis, a percussionist who also works with Gilberto Gil.

But this diversity, for me, is not only about musical genres or instruments. When I thought about the voices on the album, I wanted to bring together different artistic universes. That is why singers and actors perform together. Thelmo Fernandes, for example, is an actor who is part of the cast of I’m Still Here, the Brazilian film that won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. Bruno Ganem also participates in the album and brings other experiences and discussions related to diversity and the presence of trans people in schools.

So when I think about Rio’s music scene, I think precisely about this possibility of encounters. There is an enormous number of artists and projects happening, and today, with the internet, it is almost impossible to follow everything. But perhaps the richness lies exactly there: in the multiplicity of voices, trajectories, languages and sounds.

In a way, I tried to bring that same idea into Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! I did not want just different voices singing my songs; I wanted different experiences, stories and worlds meeting within them.

What are your main artistic influences? What have you been listening to recently?

This is a difficult question for me, because I find it hard to separate my influences by language. My background is in Visual Arts and Performing Arts, but I also had experiences with cinema, and music has been present in my life since childhood. So my creative process comes from this entanglement of languages, experiences and references.

If I think specifically about Brazilian music, Rita Lee was one of my earliest major influences. First came Rita and Os Mutantes, with their freedom, irreverence and experimentation, which always fascinated me. Rita, in particular, marked me with the strength of her identity, her songwriting, and the way she built a very unique place for herself as a woman in Brazilian rock.

Then came Caetano Veloso, who became a very strong reference for me. I deeply admire his relationship with words, poetry and invention. And I cannot think of these artists as completely separate universes. There is a strong dialogue between them and between different moments in Brazilian music. When I think of Caetano, this universe immediately expands to Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and Maria Bethânia.

Chico Buarque also holds a very important place in my references. I have always been impressed by his relationship with language, his narrative ability, and the way he builds characters, situations and entire worlds within a song. Perhaps my own relationship with theatre makes this dramaturgical dimension of his work especially meaningful to me. Secos & Molhados and Ney Matogrosso are also part of this map, especially because of their freedom, body expression, imagery and stage presence.

Cássia Eller deeply marked me. Beyond her voice, there was an extraordinary stage presence. And when I think of Cássia, I also think of the songwriters and musicians she collaborated with, such as Nando Reis. I really like this idea of music being built through encounters. Arnaldo Antunes is another very important reference for me, perhaps precisely because he is difficult to place within a single language. He moves between music, poetry, words and visual art. And I really enjoy his collaboration with Marisa Monte and Carlinhos Brown in Tribalistas. Marisa is also an artist I deeply admire for her intelligence and the very unique way she has built her career.

And I have to mention Criolo. For me, he is one of those figures who goes beyond music. There is a strength in his words, poetry, thinking and the way he looks at Brazil that deeply moves me. Ivete Sangalo is a reference for a slightly different reason: her power on stage. I deeply admire the way she occupies the stage, her energy, her communication and the relationship she builds with the audience.

My references also do not come only from individual artists. One work that deeply marked me was the documentary Amazônia Groove, by Bruno Murtinho, the brother of my friend Mariana Murtinho. It is a powerful film about the musicality of the Pará Amazon, revealing a richness of rhythms, artists, traditions and ways of life that even us Brazilians often do not know enough about. I find it a very powerful work because music, image, territory, culture and life are completely intertwined there.

And of course, there is a very interesting newer generation. Artists such as Liniker, Luedji Luna, Jota.pê and Marina Sena, among many others, show how Brazilian music continues to renew itself and build very unique identities. It is very difficult to make a list, because Brazilian music is immense. But looking at these artists and works, I notice some things that connect them in my view: identity, freedom, presence, words, body and the ability not to be limited to a single language.

As for what I have been listening to recently – as a good representative of the last century, I still listen to CDs haha! I have an album by Rita Lee that I really like called Aqui, Ali, em Qualquer Lugar, where she sings Beatles songs. I find it very interesting to hear such a strong artistic identity interpreting songs from such an iconic universe. I also have the habit of turning on Spotify and simply letting it play. I like doing that precisely to be surprised and discover artists and songs I might not have searched for on my own.

And I have been watching America’s Got Talent a lot. I love the diversity of people and performances there. Perhaps because of my background, I am very interested in observing not only who sings, but their presence, body, performance and their relationship with the audience. And I am absolutely amazed by some of the children on the show haha! They are so young and already sing with such power and confidence that it sometimes feels like they were born knowing how to sing.

You are doing a PhD in Performing Arts. How is it going? Can you tell us more about your research?

My PhD is in Performing Arts, in the line of Formative and Educational Processes, and it comes from an experience that began in the classroom about ten years ago. In 2016, I started developing an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with my students. The initial idea was to stage a performance, but during the process it felt like opening Pandora’s box. The teenagers began bringing very deep issues they were experiencing at the time, as well as narratives circulating strongly among them, such as 13 Reasons Why and the so-called Blue Whale game.

From that experience, I realised that perhaps the most important thing at that moment was not simply to reach the performance I had imagined, but to stay with the questions that had emerged and create a space where these teenagers could meet, exchange and build new relationships with one another. I then developed an interactive exhibition on art and teenage suicide, working with different artistic languages and relational practices.

Since then, I have been investigating precisely this territory where art, education and mental health meet. I am interested in thinking about the complexity of human experience and the human being as an open subject, crossed by often contradictory forces. If there are experiences that can bring us closer to a death drive, I am also interested in understanding how (within artistic experience), life drives, creation, encounters and transformation can emerge.

Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! is also an outgrowth of this trajectory. Many of the themes present in the album – body, self-esteem, the freedom to express feelings, diversity, loss, care and our relationships with others – come from this process of creation and exchange with children and teenagers. Now, in my PhD, this trajectory finds a new material form in writing and research. In a way, I am looking at almost ten years of artistic and pedagogical experiences and trying to understand what has been built along this path, always within this space where art, education and mental health intersect.

Do you have any shows planned in the UK this year?

I do not have any shows planned in the UK yet. Songs to Play, Blow and Fly! was not created as a band project. It is an authorial work that brought together different artists who embraced this creation and the questions that emerged from my experience in school. My wish now is to continue circulating this work and, at some point, bring it back to the stage, developing a performance based on this universe. I want to keep expanding my creations and finding spaces where they can take new forms and reach other people.

But I have a very special emotional connection with London. I first went there when I was about 12 years old and completely fell in love with the city. I went back briefly at 18, and that memory has stayed with me ever since. So I would love to return, and it would be very special if one day I could return bringing my work as well.

Any final words for the fans?

I hope that people who have discovered my work will now allow themselves to enter this universe with curiosity and openness. Music has a beautiful ability to cross borders, including language. Some people may not immediately understand all the words in Portuguese, but I hope they can feel the sound, the energy, the emotions and the different atmospheres present in the album.

And if this music sparks someone’s curiosity to discover what those words are saying, even better. Because, at its core, this work was born from a desire for encounter. I hope it continues to find people in different places, and that each person can build their own relationship with these songs.

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