In 1994, Brazilian singer-songwriters Antonio Villeroy and Gelson Oliveira put together the show SAÍDAS E BANDEIRAS, for their first European tour.
In 1992, Antonio had won the Sharp Award for Revelation of Brazilian Music and Gelson in 1993. These credentials helped leverage the duo's first international tour.
The show premiered in Brazil, in the city of Porto Alegre, then passed through Florianópolis and São Paulo, from where the artists travelled to Brussels. From Belgium, they went on to France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Germany, giving around 40 performances in jazz clubs, theatres and open-air arenas.
With their guitars and voices, the artists enchanted European audiences with a repertoire that included their own songs and classics by Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Tom Jobim and Chico Buarque.
The tour was repeated in 1995, after which the artists continued with their individual work, released several albums and had songs recorded by numerous artists of different nationalities.
But their tours of Europe have borne much fruit for the artists themselves, as well as for many other names in Brazilian music.
The main one was the Sud à Sul Brasil Festival, devised and produced by Antonio Villeroy and the Frenchman François Mas, which took place in the Sanary sur mer, in the south of France, from 1996 to 2006.
With different partnerships and sponsors, from 1998 to 2006 Sud à Sul became the biggest Brazilian music festival in Europe.
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of that first tour, which generated so much repercussion for Brazilian culture, Antonio and Gelson will come together again in October 2024 to perform the show Saídas e Bandeiras 2 in cities in Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany.
