Luiz Costa e Silva

Awarded by the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in 2010 and Music Production and Engineering Department (Berklee College of Music) in 2011, the guitarist, producer and audio engineer Nando Costa has been being highlighted for his musical achievements in the last few years. Nando was born in So Paulo (Brazil) and initiated his musical career at the age of 11. His first contact with music was through the keys of a keyboard, but at 15 he was presented with the first electric guitar and, as soon as the strings replaced the keys, this instrument became part of his life. After some years of self-education and intense dedication, he gathered the first results. In 2003, Nando Costa won a Brazilian guitar contest promoted by the major national guitar magazine Guitar Player Brasil. He was selected among more than 700 guitar players from all over the country and invited to play in an important festival in So Paulo, the Guitar Player Festival. He had the opportunity to share the stage with some of the top-notch Brazilian guitar players such as Kiko Loureiro, Michel Leme, Edu Ardanuy, Faska and Mozart Mello. His performance was highlighted in the magazine issue of August 2003. In the same year, he also auditioned for the Berklee World Scholarship Tour and was awarded a scholarship by merit. In the following years, Nando Costa stayed working as private music teacher and participating in various bands and musical projects, playing rock, pop, jazz and Brazilian music. One of the projects created and led by him, the progressive metal band Thessera (www.myspace.com/thessera), achieved international recognition after releasing the debut "Fooled Eyes" in 2006 by the Californian based label Prog Rock Records. The band started off the year of 2007 with concerts in Brazil and a couple of months later, they took off to their first European Tour. The trip included shows in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland and the participation in the most important progressive rock festival of Europe, Prog Power Europe. Thessera was the first Latin American band to get a spot in there. Nando Costa has been living in Boston since May 2008, where he achieved a degree in Music Production and Engineering at Berklee College of Music (class 2012). In 2010, Nando was awarded the Newman Student Award Fund by the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). He received the prize for excellence in the study of Acoustics and in its application to Architecture demonstrated in a project developed for his Applications of Music Acoustics class at Berklee. Nando Costa has just been selected to receive receive the 2011 Academic Scholar Award by the Music Production and Engineer Department at Berklee. He was chosen by Faculty, Chair and Dean based on his outstanding achievement in the major and contributions to the department. In addition to the Berklee projects, hes been working with different Brazilian artists and bands. Nando mixed and mastered the band Martiatakas EP Karma Baby in the end of 2010. Over the last summer, he produced, recorded and mixed 3 projects in Brazil for the artists "Singuload", "Joo Paulo Lanini" and "Martiataka" at the studio Verso Acstica, a partnership with the renowned singer Emmerson Nogueira (www.estudioversaoacustica.com). At the present moment, he is preparing the release for the Martiataka's new album and producing the band Hakunna's first album.