Nuno Marques: When fado meets piano and a festival becomes a movement

Nuno Marques, the Portuguese pianist who played Carnegie Hall twice and built a festival from scratch, sits down with Tony Gonçalves to explain why he has spent a career carrying Portugal in his hands. Listen to The Heart & Hustle of Portugal.

Laughing in the face of addiction: Filipe Santos’ wild ride from humble beginnings to boss life

Filipe Santos, a Portuguese-American entrepreneur born in Newark, hrecounts a path that began in the tight-knit Portuguese community of his childhood and passed through more than a decade of heroin addiction. Listen to “The Heart & Hustle of Portugal”.

Rita Barros: Chelsea Hotel room 1008, a lifetime of photography

Trained as a translator and interpreter, Rita Barros came to photography almost by accident. It began with a Tom Waits concert, where she took photographs that turned out overexposed but salvageable, and which she ended up selling to a journalist when the singer had banned the press. From there cam…

Ana Miranda turned New York dreams into a global stage for Portuguese culture

After working at the Portuguese mission to the United Nations and trying out journalism, Ana Miranda decided, in 2011, to build something of her own: a platform to show contemporary Portuguese culture abroad, starting with a short film festival she funded out of her own salary. Fifteen years later…

Joey Bats never fried an egg, now he ships pasteis de nata worldwide

Joey Bats put pastéis de nata on the map in NYC, and he did it by refusing to sell people a history lesson. He'd never cooked a day in his life. Engineer, corporate job, bored out of his mind. He got his mother's Bolo de Bolacha recipe first, sold it door to door to restaurants and bodegas, then sw…

“Losing one-zero”: Nuno Sousa on running a restaurant like a soccer match

Chef Nuno Sousa reflects on his journey from immigrant worker with three jobs to restaurant owner, and on how New York’s culture of resilience, risk-taking and reinvention shaped both his career and his outlook. The conversation traces the growth of Leitao from a street-food concept inspired by Ne…

Rerelease: Bankrol Hayden on making a hit on his death bed

Hayden Inacio grew up in Modesto, California — Central Valley, agricultural, working class. His grandfather emigrated from Terceira in the Azores, came through the East Coast, and eventually built a dairy. By the time Hayden came along, the Portuguese was mostly gone: no language, not much culture,…

Rerelease: Richie Campbell finally addresses the elephant in the room

Richie Campbell went to Jamaica at 18 with one contact and no plan. He printed out Patois lyrics at school to learn the language. He learned to compete in Kingston studios before Portugal fully understood what he was building. Speaking with Tony Gonçalves, one idea prevails: Portugal gave him roots…

Nuno Seixas music invites you to sit down and share what’s going on with your life

Nuno Seixas, 24, grew up in Sintra and attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. When he came back, he didn’t only bring his music: he brought a bench, a camera and a simple request: sit down and share what’s going on in your life. The project “Everyubody’s Going Throug Something…

Mackenzie Arromba’s songs may be sad, but she’s full of life

Winning two IPMA awards back to back is reserved only for the best. Mackenzie Arromba has done it at only 25. Even more impressive, her first award was for the very first song she wrote: “hate myself for loving you”. Before the stage, before the photos, before the fame, was a young girl sitting on …