Mariza
Sports addicts the world over may have been caught by the voice that sang the Portuguese national anthem at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and A Thousand Years in a duet with Sting at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. But many music fans, and especially those of fado, will already have become familiar with the compelling tones of Marisa dos Reis Nunes, more commonly known as Mariza, the singer who first came to the world’s attention with her debut album Fado em Mim in 2001: In a milieu where sales of 4,000 records was considered successful, Mariza sold some 140,000. She originated in Lourenzo Marques, the capital of Southern Africa’s Moçambique, and started her career singing in her parents’ restaurant. However, by 2003 she had become so renowned that BBC3 awarded her the Best European Artist in World Music award, and noted, ‘When Mariza sings, time stands still. Every word is sung with intense concentration, every note hit flawlessly. When she pauses for dramatic effect, we are all with her, caught in her trap.’ Macau has already been ensnared by her charm, in 2004 when the singer sold out performances at the Macau Cultural Centre. Now she is set to repeat that enchantment with a Macau stop on a world tour featuring songs from her latest album Terra among other fado favourites. The concert on September 5 starts at 8pm in the Macau Cultural Centre. Tel: (853) 2870 0699 for enquiries.

Macau Orchestra Concert Season
Although the curtain goes up on the Macau Orchestra’s 2009-10 season with a collaboration with soprano Pei-ying Lee in a programme of Danzi, Mozart, Schubert and JS Bach in St Dominic’s Church on September 5, the season’s gala concert will be a much more heralded affair in the Macau Cultural Centre. There the great maestro Herbert von Karajan’s choice for his only apprentice, Tang Muhai, will conduct the orchestra in a programme of Glinka’s overture to the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6 in B Minor, op 74, Pathetique, and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1, op 107. Jian Wang will be the concert’s cello soloist. For those who don’t recognize the name, Wang has been studying the cello since the age of four and made his international debut as a performer in violinist Isaac Stern’s border-breaking Oscar-winning 1981 documentary From Mao to Mozart. Wang was 10 years old when Stern described him as ‘one of the finest young instrumentalists of our time’. ‘His greatest gift is his utterly natural and profoundly good musical instinct,’ Isaac Stern said of Wang. ‘He understands the inexplicable connections within a musical line because he sings naturally on his instrument. And that’s the most important attribute in a musician. What I’m telling you about are mature attributes that one discerns later on, but what one could hear even then [as a child] was his original instinct for music.’

Fireworks
September is pyrotechnics month in Macau with the annual Macau International Fireworks Display Contest bringing 10 teams from around the world to set the SAR’s weekend night skies alight. The contest, on the seafront at the foot of the Macau Tower, starts on September 5 and will then run on September 12, 19 and 26 to finish on Thursday, October 1 – China’s National Day – with the China and Austrian teams’ efforts adding to the celebrations.

The fireworks contest started as a Macau selling point to the international community in 1995 with displays by five teams, but over the years it has grown in size and prestige. This year, contestants from Spain, Korea, Chinese Taiwan, France, Italy, the Philippines, Japan, Portugal, Austria and China will enhance their displays with music – any bets on Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite as a sound backdrop to at least one of the explosive creations? But whether the 20th-century music master features or not, the staggering scale, luminous artistry and carnival atmosphere make this a festival you want to see at least one night of.

Macau Open Golf Tournament
The Macau Open Golf Tournament celebrates its 10th anniversary this year at the Macau Golf and Country Club at Estrada de Hac Sa Coloane. Last year, being part of the Asian Tour (this year it is the 14th leg), it attracted a field of some 135 of the region’s top players and looks forward at least that number again this year. The Macau Open is a four-day stroke-play tournament with a total prize pool of US$500,000, and touts itself as one of the most prestigious contests on the Asian Tour – certainly its course, established, as it is, cheek to cheek with a 208-room resort on Coloane Island, must count as among the best. The tournament runs from September 10-13 with a cut letting through the top 65 players on the 2nd day. If the weather is kind, both spectators and players should be in for an invigorating, if not exciting, four days.