Rosa Passos Wrote It About March in Salvador; Two Friends Recorded It in Barcelona
Ramiro Pinheiro first recorded Dunas for a home session in July 2018. Back then, he played guitar and left the singing to someone else. Now he has returned to it with the French tenor saxophonist Mateo Aupitre. Their version came out on 11 September 2026, and this time Ramiro sings Fernando de Oliveira’s lyric himself.
Ramiro Pinheiro’s music is in the playlist below, together with the other records this desk has been playing. Dunas reached NewMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. So press play first, then keep reading for the story of how the song found its way back to him.
Ramiro Pinheiro Returns to Dunas as a Duo in the Year of His João Donato Tribute
The release date sits well with the song. Its lyric opens in March in Salvador, Bahia, the month the southern summer runs out. In the same way, the new Dunas reached listeners as summer was ending in Barcelona, where it was recorded.
The 2018 recording opened the Brasounds Home Sessions. That series comes from the production company that also puts out the new single. It was a trio. Marina Ribeiro sang, and Pablo Giménez played flute and recorded and mixed the session. Ramiro, for his part, played guitar and filmed the video himself. That session is still on the Brasounds YouTube channel.
Meanwhile, it has been a full year for him. The São Paulo-born musician, now based in Barcelona, works across choro, samba and jazz. First, he and the producer Rodrigo Balduino released Donateando, a tribute to João Donato recorded in Barcelona. It brought in players from the city’s jazz scene, with guests Mônica Salmaso and Rita Payés. Donato himself appears as well, in one of his final recordings. He also leads Bossa Nova Revisited with Balduino, returning to the founding songs of Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. In addition, he has released a second volume of Sublime Primavera, a duo record with Ana Rossi. Compared with all that, Dunas is his most pared-back release: two musicians and one song from Rosa Passos‘s book.
A Walk Through the Abaeté Dunes at the End of a Salvador Summer
Rosa Passos wrote the music and Fernando de Oliveira the words, and Dunas opened Passos’s 1993 album Festa. The lyric is a walk. Someone sets out from Abaeté on foot, not by car, and crosses the dunes towards Flamengo beach. Along the way, the walker names everything that grows and moves. There are orchids and bromeliads, blue-green lizards and golden foxes, butterflies, beetles and the nests of vultures. Later in the afternoon, the breeze brings a smell of rosemary and a cricket starts up. Finally, the walker feels all of it settle inside.
The song stayed in Passos’s repertoire for decades. In fact, Storyville Records named a 2021 live Rosa Passos album, recorded in Copenhagen, after it.
Dunas Pairs Ramiro Pinheiro’s Voice and Guitar With Mateo Aupitre’s Tenor in the Getz and Gilberto Line
The new recording was made in Barcelona at Arctic Wave Studio with Carlos Due. Rodrigo Balduino produced it, just as he produced Ramiro’s 2021 debut as a leader. It is built as a conversation: Ramiro sings and plays guitar, and Mateo plays tenor saxophone. Spotify lists both as main artists, the saxophonist under his full name, Mathieu Aupitre.
Ramiro introduced the single as a recording made with his friend Mateo. In turn, the saxophonist brings a long road of his own. He comes from Villeneuve-sur-Lot in south-west France, where his father directed a choir. As a boy he sang in it, before he took up the saxophone and studied jazz. Later, in Barcelona, his work ran through Afro-Cuban jazz, soul, funk and Brazilian music. Since 2014 he has toured with the Playing For Change Band. Those tours have taken him to Brazilian television and to the Bourbon Street club in São Paulo.
Pairing a Brazilian voice and guitar with a tenor saxophone has a famous precedent. In March 1963 Stan Getz went into a New York studio with João Gilberto. The album that came out of it, Getz/Gilberto, won Album of the Year at the 1965 Grammys. It was the first jazz album to do so. Stan Getz and João Gilberto had Antônio Carlos Jobim at the piano, with bass and drums behind them. By contrast, Dunas keeps only the two leads.
NewMusic.News’s curator team: “The arrangement is the argument here. With only a voice, a guitar and a tenor saxophone, every line of the lyric has room. Mateo Aupitre answers Ramiro Pinheiro like a friend on the same walk, pointing out what he has just seen.”
Who Will Want Dunas by Ramiro Pinheiro, and Where to Hear and Follow Him
Dunas will suit listeners who keep bossa nova and Brazilian jazz close, in Brazil, Spain and the United States. It will also suit anyone who knows Rosa Passos’s own recordings and wants to hear the song in other hands. Equally, it is a good way into Ramiro Pinheiro’s catalogue. His debut as a leader, Sentido, came out on Fresh Sound Records in 2021. It drew reviews from All About Jazz and Jazz Guitar Today. Then Donateando followed on the same label this year.
Stream Ramiro Pinheiro’s music on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Watch him on YouTube and follow him on Instagram, Facebook and X. The full discography is on his official site.
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