Dani Gurgel

Dani Gurgel connects music and photography in all aspects and contexts, with over a decade of professional experience in both music and photography, enhanced by her ability to adapt to new medias and new ways of expressing and sharing art. Her long experience as a musician is the foundation for her visual representation of sounds. Graduated from Escola Panamericana de Arte's photography program still in her teens, followed by many specialization courses at Senac-SP. She studied at CLAM (Zimbo Trio music school) for 15 years, having played saxophone in Big Bands leaded by Roberto Sion, Amilton Godoy and Fernando Mota. Dani created photography, video and design for a variety of artists and labels such as Mônica Salmaso, Fabiana Cozza, Pau Brasil, Mario Adnet, Biscoito Fino and Pedro Mariano; besides leading her own musical projects as a singer, having performed at Tokyo Jazz Festival, Jazz a la Calle (Uruguay), Argentina and the USA, besides concerts with the Tom Jobim Orchestra and Som Brasil TV show at Globo. She is a curator and developer of the podcast "Música de Graça" (Music for free), in which she invites artists who have never recorded together to perform a new song. During her bachelor studies in Social Communication at University of São Paulo, she worked with photographer Marcel Valvassori as his first assistant, with whom she improved her skills on still/product and advertising photography, as she also assisted his partners Paulo Vainer, Rafael Costa and Andreas Heiniger. While still studying at USP, Dani also spent some time as an art director at advertising agency "Full Jazz". Nowadays, her studio, Da Pá Virada, shoots photography for clients such as Natura, Quaker, Caipirinha One, Kellog's, Toddy, Azeite Gallo. As of her graduation from USP in 2007, she published her monography "Photography and music: from vinyl to mp3, from film to mobile", advised by Luli Radfahrer. It approaches the changes in the way we make and share art nowadays, in a digital context.